


Missing You

by WritingForTheRevolution



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (because I'm not giving spoilers), Angst, Flashbacks, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I did so much research during this, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kidnapping, M/M, Nerf Wars, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, References to Hamlet, References to Macbeth, Texting, Voicemail
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-05-05 20:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14626694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingForTheRevolution/pseuds/WritingForTheRevolution
Summary: And all their words for glory / Well they always sounded empty / When we're looking up for heaven—Bastille, “Glory”When you lose someone close to you, you deny that it even happened. You try not to think about it for as long as you can. Once you finally acknowledge that it happened, you get angry. They deserved so much more than they ever got to have. After that, you plead with God, with the world, with some higher power, asking, begging them to make everything go back to the way it was, and then, before your unanswered prayers cause you to lose faith, you start to count. You count every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and you try to keep going when all you can do is hope for the best and try not to fall apart.That’s when you start to accept it. That’s when you start to move on.Of course, not everything works out like that.





	1. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright.
> 
> This has been a work in progress since September of 2017. It started with a long fricken concept paragraph, and then it turned into this thing.
> 
> Please refrain from killing me because as I told my best friend and beta reader, if you kill me, you don't get the rest of the story.

Monday, April 24  
**To John**  
**7:36 am**  
John  
Are you awake  
Washington’s not here yet  
I’m bored

 **From John**  
**7:37 am**  
I am now  
Remind me again why you take the 8am classes

 **To John**  
**7:37 am**  
Because the people in them actually care  
Anyway  
Now that you’re awake you can talk to me

 **From John**  
**7:38 am**  
No  
I don’t have class until 12  
I’m going back to sleep

 **To John**  
**7:38 am**  
No don’t leave  
Talk to me  
I’m really bored

 **From John**  
**7:39 am**  
That’s your own damn fault  
For going to class a half hour early

 **To John**  
**7:39 am**  
I’ll buy you coffee when I get out of class  
And a muffin

 **From John**  
**7:40 am**  
Why do you think that bribing me with food  
Will make me want to stay awake for another hour and a half  
When I could be sleeping

 **To John**  
**7:41 am**  
Because you want muffins  
And you love me

 **From John**  
**7:42 am**  
I hate you  
For waking me up

 **To John**  
**7:43 am**  
But you do want a muffin

 **From John**  
**7:47 am**  
Yes

 **To John**  
**7:50 am**  
See you in an hour

* * *

Friday, April 28  
**From John**  
**6:37 pm**  
Hey Alex you good?

 **To John**  
**6:38 pm**  
Yeah  
It’s not that bad

 **From John**  
**6:38 pm**  
They said it’s gonna get worse in the next hour  
Thunder, not just rain

 **To John**  
**6:39 pm**  
I’ll be fine

 **From John**  
**6:39 pm**  
I have class until eight  
But if you need me I’ll come back  
Text me okay?

 **To John**  
**6:40 pm**  
Yeah

 **From John**  
**6:40 pm**  
I’ll see you in a bit

 **To John**  
**7:33 pm**  
john  
can you come back

 **From John**  
**7:33 pm**  
Yeah of course

 **To John**  
**7:34 pm**  
im sorry  
please hurry

 **From John**  
**7:34 pm**  
Don’t apologize it’s fine  
Do you want me to call you  
Alex?

 **To John**  
**7:37 pm**  
no  
i have that one voicemail  
please just come

 **From John**  
**7:37 pm**  
I’m coming  
Try to breathe

 **To John**  
**7:38 pm**  
i am

 **From John**  
**7:38 pm**  
Do you want me to keep texting you

 **To John**  
**7:39 pm**  
no  
im gonna count

 **From John**  
**7:40 pm**  
Okay  
I’ll be there soon

 **To John**  
**7:42 pm**  
are you close  
john

 **From John**  
**7:43 pm**  
I’m coming up the stairs  
Can you open the door or...

 **To John**  
**7:43 pm**  
dont want to move  
im sorry

 **From John**  
**7:43 pm**  
It’s fine I have my keys

 **To John**  
**7:44 pm**  
thank you

* * *

Tuesday, May 2  
**From John**  
**1:17 pm**  
Alex  
Stop throwing books  
I’m tired of hearing stuff hit the floor

 **To John**  
**1:17 pm**  
I don’t want to read Macbeth

 **From John**  
**1:18 pm**  
Doesn’t mean you have to throw it

 **To John**  
**1:18 pm**  
I dropped it  
There’s a difference

 **From John**  
**1:18 pm**  
You’d actually like Macbeth  
He’s kinda like you

 **To John**  
**1:19 pm**  
Really?  
I would hire someone to kill my best friend?

 **From John**  
**1:20 pm**  
Not like that you idiot  
I meant that he’s ambitious  
And I hope you wouldn’t hire anyone to kill me

 **To John**  
**1:21 pm**  
To kill you?  
Who says you’re my best friend?  
Maybe I was talking about Laf

 **From John**  
**1:21 pm**  
You’re an ass

 **To John**  
**1:21 pm**  
You love me  
Actually though, you’re my best friend

 **From John**  
**1:24 pm**  
Good

* * *

Saturday, May 6  
**To John**  
**2:15 am**  
Can you read it one more time for me?

 **From John**  
**2:15 am**  
Alex your essay is fine  
How much longer is this going to take

 **To John**  
**2:16 am**  
I’ll keep you up all night  
If you know what I mean  
;)

 **From John**  
**2:17 am**  
Did you seriously just send me a pickup line  
And a winky face  
At 2 in the morning  
Honestly it’s like you’re sliding into my dms

 **To John**  
**2:18 am**  
I have more respect for you than that  
;)

 **From John**  
**2:19 am**  
Goodnight Alex

 **To John**  
**2:19 am**  
But I’m not tired  
And don’t you mean good morning?  
John?  
I’m sorry for the pickup line  
And the winky face

 **From John**  
**2:28 am**  
You should be  
;)

* * *

Wednesday, May 10  
**Group message <<Angelica, Burr, Eliza, Herc, John, Laf, Peggy>>**

 **To all**  
**12:18 pm**  
So you guys are all coming over Friday yeah?

 **From Angelica**  
**12:19 pm**  
Yup  
Eliza says yes too

 **From Herc**  
**12:19 pm**  
Yeah of course

 **From Laf**  
**12:19 pm**  
Oui  
And try not to blow up this chat  
I am in class

 **From Burr**  
**12:20 pm**  
Will there be alcohol so I don’t have to deal with your brash stupidity?

 **To all**  
**12:20 pm**  
I’m offended Burr  
So cold  
But yes

 **From Burr**  
**12:21 pm**  
Alright then.

 **From Peggy**  
**12:22 pm**  
you still owe me doritos alex

 **From John**  
**12:23 pm**  
Yeah you do Alex  
I nominate Alex to get snacks

 **To all**  
**12:23 pm**  
Betrayed by my best friend

 **From John**  
**12:23 pm**  
How sad  
You’ll get over it

 **To all**  
**12:25 pm**  
Fine, I’ll get food

 **From Peggy**  
**12:25 pm**  
and my doritos

 **To all**  
**12:25 pm**  
Yes Margarita I’ll get your dumb doritos

* * *

Friday, May 12  
**To John**  
**3:25 pm**  
John I’m bored come talk to me

 **From John**  
**3:25 pm**  
Alex I’m literally in the next room  
Stop texting me and walk ten feet

 **To John**  
**3:26 pm**  
But I’m comfortable here

 **From John**  
**3:26 pm**  
You just want me in your bed

 **To John**  
**3:27 pm**  
Never! I’d wait until at least the second date  
And I’d like to point out that you’re answering my messages, so you’re just as lazy as I am  
I heard you sigh  
You know I’m right

 **From John**  
**3:29 pm**  
I hate you

 **To John**  
**3:29 pm**  
You love me

 **From John**  
**3:29 pm**  
I tolerate you

 **To John**  
**3:29 pm**  
You wound me, Laurens

 **From John**  
**3:30 pm**  
What a tragedy  
Hey Alex  
Everyone’s going to be here in a few hours and you promised you’d get snacks  
Shouldn’t you be doing that right now

 **To John**  
**3:33 pm**  
I never promised  
I was coerced

 **From John**  
**3:34 pm**  
Same difference

 **To John**  
**3:35 pm**  
I’ll be back in a bit

 **From John**  
**3:36 pm**  
Don’t forget Peggy’s doritos or she’ll probably murder you

 **From John**  
**4:44 pm**  
The Schuylers just arrived  
Where are you  
Peggy says if you don’t bring her doritos she’s going to slap you  
Everyone is here Alex where are you  
Did your phone die again  
You really need to remember to charge it

 **Missed call from John**  
**New Voicemail (1)**  
_Hey, Alex. Uh, everyone else is here; we’re just waiting for you. If your phone died again, you’re getting a lecture from at least two people when you get here. Call me back if you get the chance._

 **From John**  
**5:24 pm**  
Alex where are you we’re getting worried

 **From Herc**  
**5:25 pm**  
Yo alex where you at

 **From Laf**  
**5:28 pm**  
Alexander where are you  
John is pacing

 **Missed call from Herc**  
**Missed call from Laf**

 **From John**  
**5:32 pm**  
Alex you’ve been gone for two hours where are you

 **Missed call from John (2)**  
**New Voicemail (1)**  
_Alex it’s been two hours, where are you? I know you’re not lost; you know this city better than any of us. At least text me back, please?_

 **From Eliza**  
**5:33 pm**  
Alex where are you?

 **From Angelica**  
**5:33 pm**  
Where the hell are you Alexander?  
We’re starting to worry

 **From Peggy**  
**5:33 pm**  
alex you’d better bring me my fuckin doritos  
but seriously where are you  
we’re kinda freaking out here

 **Missed call from Eliza**  
**Missed call from Angelica**  
**Missed call from Peggy**

 **From John**  
**5:36 pm**  
Alex please answer me where are you  
Are you okay  
Alex when I said stop texting me earlier I didn’t mean it like this

 **Missed call from John (4)**  
**New Voicemail (2)**  
_Alex, if this is some stupid prank, stop it. Just pick up._

_Alex, I’m worried about you. Please answer me. Or someone else, I don’t care. Just… just let me know you’re okay._

**From John**  
**5:41 pm**  
Alex just answer please  
Alex  
Alex I’m going to call the police

**Missed call from John (7)**

**From Burr**  
**5:52 pm**  
Hamilton.  
Laurens is freaking out.  
He says he’s going to call the police if you don’t answer soon.

 **Missed call from Burr**  
**New Voicemail (1)**  
_Hamilton, all your friends are freaking out. I don’t know what you’re doing, but please, answer one of them before they do something stupid._

 **From John**  
**5:57 pm**  
Alex please

**Missed call from John (11)**

* * *

John was freaking out. Well, they all were, but he was on a completely different level. He’d called Alex at least ten times, texted him probably twice that many, and Alex still hadn’t answered a single one. Granted, he sometimes forgot to respond to texts until three hours later, but with John, he usually answered within a few minutes. It made him happy, knowing that Alex cared about him enough to respond to his texts in a reasonable amount of time.

But now he hadn’t replied in three hours, and John was worried. Eliza was probably the calmest of all of them at the moment, save for Burr, but he rarely showed his true emotions on anything, so he didn’t count.

“All we can really do is wait,” Eliza said from her spot on the couch. “He’ll be back soon.”

The tremor in her voice begged to differ.

“Well there has to be something else we can do,” John cast his gaze around the room, unable to focus on anything in particular. “Is there anyone else we can call?” He paused. “Do you even have to wait twenty-four hours to call the police if someone is missing?”

He was met with silence.

“Anyone? Guys, please, I need to know—”

“Okay, okay, hang on,” Angelica muttered from her place against the wall, pulling out her phone. “Give me a second.”

John fidgeted as she typed, clicking his own phone on and staring at the blank notification screen for a second before it went black again. He still had some semblance of hope that the screen would light up with Alex’s name, a text telling John that he’d be home soon, or that he’d walk through the door announcing that his phone had died.

“Alright, here we go,” Angelica said, reading from her screen as John shook himself out of his thoughts. “You do not have to wait twenty-four hours to report someone as missing—”

John cut her off before she finished. “Okay, so what are we waiting for then?”

Burr sighed. “What if he just forgot his keys? Or his phone died, or something.”

John shook his head, not waiting for him to finish. “He took his keys.”

Alex had never forgotten his keys, not once in the time they’d lived together in the apartment. They had spent so long looking for one that was actually affordable, so they could get out of the cramped campus dorms. And when they finally found one that was close to campus and within their price range, Alex had been so happy. John knew he’d never really had a place to call his own, not since he was little, and so John had watched him bounce around like an excited puppy while he signed the lease.

The apartment had actually been pretty nice when they moved in; all they really had to do was repaint the walls and get new furniture. That wasn’t a problem; it was actually fun, picking out colors and then watching Alex cover himself in paint by accident. More of the paint had ended up on them than had actually gone on the walls. John’s favorite shirt was still stained with little green dots.

Burr’s voice jerked him from his thoughts. “But his phone-”

“Will both of you shut up please? I’m trying to make the phone call you insisted on,” Angelica snapped from the corner. She pressed the phone to her ear, biting her lip as it presumably rang through. Eventually, John assumed, someone picked up.

“Yes, my name is Angelica Schuyler I would like to report a missing person.” She paused while the person on the other end answered, and then she sighed. “Yes, I'll hold.”

Everyone in the room was watching Angelica, and John fidgeted while he leaned on the counter. He clicked his phone on again, still with no notifications, and his heart dropped a little more. What if Alex was hurt and John wasn’t doing anything about it? What if Alex needed him, and he wasn’t there? What if John would never get the text he was so desperately hoping for?

He shook his head quickly, pushing those thoughts away. He dropped his phone onto the counter and shoved it away from himself. Staring at it wasn't going to make Alex text back any faster, if at all.

Angelica’s voice startled him back into reality. “Alright, thank you,” she said into the phone.

As soon as she’d hung up, John pounced. “What’d they say? Can we do anything?”

“They told me we can come file a report at our earliest convenience.” She glanced down at her phone, probably checking her texts, and slipped it into her pocket. “We can go in the morning.”

“But the precinct is still open, right?” John tapped his fingers on the counter absently, grounding himself with the feeling of his fingertips connecting with the laminate surface.

Angelica looked at him. “Well yeah, but—”

He pushed back off the counter. “Okay, then let’s go now.”

“Laurens, we need some sleep, and we need time to reason this out. We can’t just—”

“No!” John slammed his hands onto the counter, nearly hitting his phone in the process. Eliza startled from her seat on the couch, and Laf looked over at him with wide eyes. “We can’t just wait. If something happens to him, I—” He broke off, the words catching in his throat. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

Angelica was silent, staring at him for a second. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, not in a menacing way, but like she was trying to figure something out. It was a look that John didn't understand, but before he could ask her what it meant, she was already speaking.

“You know what, never mind,” she said quickly, walking over to the door and slipping her feet into her sneakers. “Let’s go.”

* * *

John was still pacing.

The six of them had been at the station for three hours. Burr had opted to wait back at the apartment, saying he'd stay for a few hours just in case Alex came back, and then he'd go home. The rest of them had walked to the 24th Precinct.

They’d filled out a missing persons report and given it to the tired-looking man behind the desk, who directed them to the hard plastic chairs in the lobby after John insisted that they would wait until an officer could meet with them. So they sat, staring blankly at the dark grey walls of the station, and they waited.

It was surprisingly silent, at seven o’clock on a Friday night. Every once in a while, a car would pass by on the street outside, casting shadows across the walls as the headlights faded into the distance, someone would pass by on the sidewalk, shouting something unintelligible, or an officer crossed through the lobby, taking a second glance at the six college kids sitting anxiously against the wall as he went about his business. But other than that, it was quiet.

John kept checking his phone, and he noticed his friends doing the same, tapping the screen for a brief moment before putting them down again. Peggy was curled up in her chair like a cat, scrolling through something, Laf had his head on Herc’s shoulder, and Eliza looked as if she was praying. Angelica was alternating between tapping her feet against the ground and staring at the man behind the desk as if she could telepathically make him do something.

The silence was deafening, but all of them were too wrapped up in their own thoughts and worries to hold a conversation. John got tired of the silence after a while. He needed to do something, anything to get out of his own head. He shoved his chair back against the wall with a loud screech, startling everyone as he stood up, and started pacing the length of the room.

After what seemed like hours walking across the same thirty-seven grey tiles again and again, —John had been counting— they had been called over by the man at the desk. He led them through the dimly lit halls to a tiny interrogation room, and left with the promise that an officer would be in to talk to them shortly.

John had sat still in one of the metal chairs for a bit, taking in the chipping, off-white paint, the flickering yellow light above their heads, and the mirror on the far wall that was most likely one-way glass. The clock on the wall ticked monotonously, marking each second as it passed. He had counted each ceiling tile, traced his gaze across the winding pattern of the carpet on the floor, and checked his phone every minute before he realized he didn’t have reception. He remained still in his chair for a few more minutes before his thoughts started consuming him once more. After trying to ignore them for a moment, he found himself pacing again, this time across the significantly shorter length of the dingy room.

“John, mon chou, pacing is not going to make anything happen faster,” Laf said after a while. “You should sit down.”

John ignored him and kept walking. He knew he was probably freaking them all out, making them even more anxious than they already were, but he couldn’t sit still. Not when he felt like he should be doing something.

But what could he do? He didn’t know anything. He knew where Alex had been going, he knew that he wasn’t answering his phone, and he knew that he hadn’t come home, but other than that, he was clueless. There was so much he didn’t know.

All of this felt wrong. They shouldn’t be here, in a tiny police station interrogation room with the clock ticking steadily toward nine. They should be sitting in the apartment, watching some movie they’d seen a thousand times and falling asleep in a tangled pile on the couch. Alex should have walked through the door four hours ago, griping about Peggy’s unfair demands for Doritos.

The door opened, and John’s gaze snapped up from the floor, focusing on the man in the white uniform who walked in. He heard his friends shift behind him, their chairs scraping the floor as they stood up.

“Are you the friends of Alexander Hamilton?” the man asked, looking through a manila file folder in his hands.

“Yes,” John said, taking a step forward. “Did you find something?”

The man gestured for them to sit down. “I’m just here to ask you a few questions,” he said, seating himself in the last remaining chair at the end of the table. He pulled out a pen. “What is your relation to Mr. Hamilton?”

“None of us are family, if that’s what you mean,” John said. “We’re just friends.”

The man wrote something on one of the papers from the folder. “Okay, and why do you suspect that Mr. Hamilton is missing?”

John glanced at the clock. “He wasn’t answering his phone for about three hours.”

The officer looked up. “Is that unusual?” he asked. “Is there a possibility that his phone died?”

John’s gaze fell back down to stare at the table. “He usually responds to me pretty fast,” he said. “And he just went out to get snacks. So if his phone died, he wouldn’t be gone for five hours.”

The officer nodded, scribbling a few more words on the paper before tapping a dot at the end of the sentence. He put down his pen and stood up.

“Alright,” he said, closing the folder and smoothing his shirt. “You all should go home and get some sleep. There’s not much we can do until detectives Greene and Knox come in tomorrow morning.”

“But can’t we do something now?” John asked. They couldn’t just leave, not without doing something. “Can’t you just... put someone on the case right now, start a search or- or something?”

The man shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded tired, like he had dealt with too much that day; like he had dealt with too much in general. John wondered how many times he had spoken those words in his life, how many people he had offered those syllables to in place of the answer they wanted. He wondered how many new files he had made that day, how many files he had to read that contained the deeds of people who had done terrible things, or the people who had been the victims of those things. He had probably questioned a dozen people and talked to a dozen officers about a dozen different arrests. They were just another part of his day; Alex was just another file.

“John, he’s right,” Herc said quietly, pulling John from his thoughts as he put a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t help Alex if we’re tired as hell.”

“Fine.” John sighed as he pressed his hands to his eyes. “But we’re coming back tomorrow.”

Herc nodded. “Yeah, of course. We just need some sleep.”

John quietly thanked the officer as they walked out and made their way back through the dim, winding halls and through the lobby. The man at the desk was gone, and the lobby was quiet again. John turned to Angelica once they were outside.

“Did Burr ever text you?”

She pulled out her phone and clicked on one of the conversations. John leaned over her shoulder. “He just said that he had to go home. Alex isn’t there.”

John bit his lip and said nothing.

“What time is it?” Peggy held up her phone. “My phone is dead.

Angelica clicked back to her home screen. “Almost ten. We should get back.”

They started walking back down the sidewalk, making their way through the dark city streets. John cast glances down every sidestreet,

“You guys can stay at our place,” he said quietly. “There’s enough space.”

There really wasn’t; when everyone stayed over, at least three people ended sleeping on the floor. But John was too tired, too worried to voice what he was actually thinking.

It would have been too quiet without Alex there. And when it was quiet, John knew that everything would come flooding back. Every invasive thought that he tried to push away, every possibility that took root in his head, every single thing that he didn’t want to think about.

Maybe he was in denial. Maybe he wanted it to feel like nothing was wrong, like it was just another night of having their friends over and staying up late and crashing on the couch at two in the morning. Maybe he just didn’t want to believe that Alex was gone.

And when they walked in the door, maybe he was still hoping, despite the text from Burr, that Alex would be there waiting, telling them that his phone had died and threatening to eat Peggy’s doritos.

So when he wasn’t, when they walked in and the apartment was dark and silent, maybe John’s heart dropped just a little bit more.

The Schuylers ended up spreading out across the living room floor, pushing the coffee table out of the way so that they had more space. Herc stretched out on the couch, pulling a few blankets from the pile that John had dragged out from somewhere, and Laf managed to fit the entirety of his long body on the loveseat across the room.

It was an unspoken agreement that no one slept in Alex’s room. Usually John would be the one to lay on the floor next to Alex’s bed, drawing or listening to Alex rant about something. Or Alex would be on John’s floor, typing something until John made him stop.

At some point, when one of them didn’t want to lay on the hard floor, they usually ended up wrapped together in the bed.

John retreated to his own room after making sure his friends didn’t need anything. They assured him they were fine, that they could get anything if they needed it, but he lingered for as long as he could. He didn’t want to go back into the silence that suffocated him when he wasn’t doing something.

He ended up closing the door and sitting on his bed. He held his phone in his hands, staring at the screen until his eyes unfocused and he had to blink. He sighed, standing up and walking across the room to plug his phone in before he undressed and pulled on a t-shirt and sweatpants. He flipped the light switch and got into bed.

John tossed and turned for a bit before he ended up laying on his back, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars and letting his mind wander. Alex had gotten them for his birthday the year before, saying they reminded him of John’s freckles.

Alex always remembered the important stuff; birthdays, important events, but he forgot about smaller stuff all the time. He got wrapped up in his own head, entangled in his words, and he would end up blowing something off on accident. But then again, even when he did forget about stuff, he was never gone for this long. He usually remembered after half an hour or so of writing or arguing with someone who he needed to prove wrong, and then he showed up out of breath with the usual excuses on his tongue. He had gotten caught up in his writing, he had been debating with a professor over the wording on an exam. Their group had kind of just learned to accept that.

So, logically, John could convince himself that Alex was fine. He was just...

But what if Alex was gone forever?

John shook his head hard, as if that would make the intrusive thought go away. That was a possibility he refused to accept.

Herc was right, he needed sleep. Besides, the faster he fell asleep, the faster the morning would come. He turned over and closed his eyes.

He didn't sleep that night.

* * *

Judging from the lack of energy in the apartment the next morning, his friends hadn’t gotten much sleep either. Angelica had pressed steaming cups of coffee into their hands as soon as they stumbled into the kitchen, and had forced them to eat something, but for the most part, she was silent as well.

The station was just as quiet as their group, and a different officer sat at the front desk. After a few minutes of waiting in the lobby, where John was too tired to even think about pacing, an officer led them through the same hallways to the same room as the night before, and left them with the same promise that someone would be in to speak with them shortly.

It seemed more real now, John realized; this was actually happening. Last night had seemed like a joke, like some kind of bad dream that they would all wake up from eventually. It was more real now that it was light outside and nothing had changed.

John looked around at his friends. Herc had his head down on the table, and Laf leaned on his shoulder. Peggy and Eliza were slumped against Angelica, who was staring at John with the same look in her eyes as the night before. As soon as John caught her gaze though, whatever it was disappeared.

He tried to figure out what that look meant, but his brain was still too muddled with sleep to think through anything logically. He resigned himself to the silence again, and resisted the urge to check his phone because he knew he had no signal in the stupid, tiny room.

After what felt like forever in his sleep-deprived state, the door opened and two men walked in. They obviously weren’t officers, as both of them wore neatly-ironed suits and ties, and John figured that they must be the detectives that the tired officer had mentioned last night. They walked over to the table and sat down.

“I’m Detective Greene, and this is my partner, Detective Knox,” the taller of the two said, motioning to the second detective. “We understand that you reported your friend missing last night, one…” He opened the folder. “Alexander Hamilton?”

John nodded, making a conscious effort to focus on the detective’s words. God, he was so tired. He didn't know how Alex did this; sleeping so little and still managing to stay awake the next day.

“An officer talked to you last night, correct?” Detective Greene asked. “After you filed your report?”

John nodded, stifling a yawn. “Yeah, but he just asked some basic stuff, I think. If we were his family and why we think he’s missing.”

“Okay, I have a few more questions that I need to ask, so bear with me.” He pulled out a notebook and pen before he looked back up at the group. “I know you probably don’t want to be here right now, so we’re gonna try and get you out of here as soon as possible. You told the officer last night that your friend went to get snacks. What was that for?”

“We were having a movie night.” John traced his finger along the edge of the table. It caught on the sharp edge of the metal and he pulled it away quickly. “He just went to get some food. Soda and chips or something.”

The detective nodded, writing something down. John stared at the tiny droplet of blood welling up from the cut on his finger for a second while he waited for the next question.

“Where was he going?”

John rubbed the blood from his finger onto his palm, ignoring the sting from the torn skin. “There’s this little shop on 107th and Manhattan, like two blocks from our apartment. He was probably going there.”

Detective Greene made another note on his paper, probably the street corner, before he looked back up at John.

“Okay, is there any reason to believe that your friend went missing of his own accord?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Herc leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “Like, did he want to go missing?”

Detective Greene sat back in his chair, folding his hands. “Sometimes, when people disappear, it’s because they want to escape something. Especially when they stop answering their phone. Did he ever talk about leaving?”

The six of them looked at each other before shaking their heads.

“Not that I can remember,” Eliza said, pulling on her skirt. “I think he was happy in New York.”

Herc looked down, kicking the carpet with his sneakers. “Yeah. He liked being in the city.”

“Does he have any—” Detective Greene waved his pen in the air. “—family he might go to, anyone he might visit without telling you?”

John shifted in his chair, rubbing at the torn skin on his finger again. “His mother died when he was young, and as far as we know, his father and his brother don’t live in the country.” He paused for a second before continuing. “Alex, he- he came here from the Caribbean after the hurricane, and his family never contacted him.”

“To our knowledge,” Angelica cut in, sitting forward in her chair. “He could have talked to them without us knowing.”

“No,” John countered, looking up. “He told me that he never talked to them, and that he didn’t really want to.”

“Okay…” Detective Greene paused to write a few more words in his notebook and a couple on a paper that he took out of the file folder. He looked up at the group after a moment.

“Now, this is important, and it might not be relevant, but did your friend have any suicidal intentions?” He leaned forward, resting his arms on the table and meeting John’s gaze. “Because sometimes, that’s a common…”

John didn’t hear the rest of the explanation for the question; the words were ringing in his ears as he leaned back from the table and blinked quickly, his gaze falling to the floor.

_Suicidal intentions?_

Alex wouldn’t… Alex wasn’t like that. He wasn’t the one who thought about any of that, who thought about… about escaping that way. He used his words to get out.

Right?

“Hey, kid, breathe.”

Detective Knox reached his hand across the table and set it carefully on John's arm. “Kid, it's a very low possibility, but it's still a possibility.” He pulled his hand away and sat back. “We don't know anything about your friend, so we have to cover all of our bases, okay?”

John took a shaky breath, nodding while he pulled at his sleeves. “Okay. Then no. He- he seemed fine.”

Alex was fine. Alex wasn't the one who needed help all the time.

“Did he, um…” Detective Knox shuffled the papers in his hands, watching John the whole time. “Did he have any mental problems that might cause him to forget where he was?” He seemed hesitant, as if he was afraid John would zone out again. “Did he take any medications that you know of?”

Eliza leaned towards him. “John, you lived with him.” She caught his gaze; her eyes were wide and calm. “You would have known if he took anything, right?”

“I- I don't think he had anything.”

But what did he know? He didn’t know where Alex was right now; he didn’t really know anything about this investigation. Did he even know Alex at all?

No. He shook that thought away. He would have noticed. He spent so much of his time with Alex; he would have noticed medications.

“I think… I think I would have noticed. But he… he might not have talked about it either.” He took a breath and pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. He would deal with them later.

“It’s alright if you don’t know,” Detective Greene interjected. “If that was the case, it would most likely be in his medical records, which we would be able to get access to if we thought it might be a problem.”

John nodded, looking down at his hands. The cut had stopped bleeding, but it still hurt. He resisted the urge to pull at the skin and instead pushed his hands under his legs. After a second, he looked back up at the detectives.

Detective Knox caught John’s eyes when he looked up, waiting until he had his full attention. “Lastly, is there anyone who would want to hurt him? Anyone he fought with on a regular basis?”

Laf sighed, twisting his hands in his lap. “Alexander and Thomas debated a lot, but neither of them would want to hurt the other. Alexander argued with many people, but I do not think that any of them would be angry enough to want to cause him any harm.”

“Are you sure there isn’t anyone else?” Detective Greene leaned across the table again. “Anyone at all?”

“Yeah,” Herc said. “If Alex had a problem with someone, he wouldn’t keep quiet about it, and most of the people he fought with were classmates.”

Detective Greene leaned back, nodding. “Okay.” He looked to his partner. Detective Knox nodded, and Greene turned back to the group.

“From what you’ve told us, there isn’t any indication of your friend going missing because he wanted to. He doesn’t have any medical conditions that could potentially harm him, and you didn’t notice anything off in his actions.” He looked around at each of them. “And friends usually notice those things.”

Detective Knox nodded, tapping his pen against the table. “Besides, you guys are college students. None of you are his family, and I don’t think any of you are rich. So there’s no motive for ransom, especially if none of you have been contacted by now. So…”

He pulled a few more papers out of the folder, sliding them across the table so the group could see them.

“There are a few things we can do right now.” He pointed to the paper on the left. “If you fill this out, we can print missing person posters to put up around the city. That will at least get the word out, get people looking around.” He paused. “And we’ll need a picture for that one.” He pointed to the other. “And this one will just give us a little more information, a few more starting points for the investigation to go off of what we already have.”

The group nodded. John pulled the forms toward himself and stared at the tiny print for a moment, trying to make sense of the dozens of words floating across the page.

Why couldn’t this just be over? He didn’t want to be here, filling out forms to make posters to find Alex; he wanted to be at home, wanted Alex to be at home, laughing about some stupid conversation and punching Alex in the shoulder.

The papers were pulled away after a second, tugged gently from his fingers. He blinked, and turned to see Angelica sitting back down, writing quickly without saying a word. When she was finished, she handed the forms back to Detective Greene, who placed them back into the folder.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to find your friend.” Detective Knox kept his eyes fixed on John while he spoke. “Alright?”

John nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and the detectives smiled carefully back. They stood up and shook hands with each member of the group before they exited the room.

“Well,” Angelica stood up. “Now we wait, I guess.”

John was too tired to argue. They made their way, once again, through the dim hallways and back out onto the brightly lit street. He checked his phone once he was sure he had signal. Nothing.

Laf had to go to work, Peggy wanted food, and Herc had some study session for an exam in one of his classes, so the Angelica and Eliza ended up walking with John back to his apartment. They didn’t talk much on the walk back; there wasn’t anything to say. Either that, or none of them wanted to say anything. Either way, they didn’t break the silence until they were back at John’s apartment. They paused outside.

“Call us if you need anything, okay?” Angelica said, staring at him. The look was back across her face, but he didn’t bother asking about it.

“Yeah, I’ll- I’ll be fine,” he said quietly. He stepped up onto the first stair. “I’ll see you guys later.”

Eliza put her hand on his shoulder for a second, before she and Angelica walked away, and somehow the gesture calmed John slightly. He watched them until they turned the corner, and then he went inside.

The apartment was still silent when he walked in. He tossed his keys on the counter and plugged his phone in to charge. All the blankets from the night before were still scattered across the floor, and he set about picking them up, folding everything to be put away again. Once he was done, he took a few steps towards Alex’s room before he registered what he was doing.

“He’s not here, remember?” John muttered to himself, shaking his head and turning towards his own room.

He tried to study to get his brain to shut up, and ended up staring at the same numbing medical diagrams for over an hour before he realized that he hadn’t understood any of them. He went back to the beginning of the chapter and started again with the introduction. Four pages after that, he realized he hadn’t actually read any of the words, and turned back to the beginning again. After skimming two sentences, his brain finally decided that he might actually retain something if he took notes.

John wrote mindless medical terms until he finally had the mind to look at his watch. The little hands pointed to nine, and he had forgotten to eat anything. John sighed and ran a hand down his face. When did Alex’s study habits start rubbing off on him?

He walked to the kitchen and absently pulled something out of the fridge, probably leftover takeout from earlier in the week, and sat at the table with his book, taking notes between bites of food. It was only after he had looked up five times that he registered that he was waiting for Alex to interrupt his studying to rant about something from one of his classes.

He shook his head, getting up and closing his textbook. He didn’t bother washing his bowl, opting instead to leave it in the sink, and grabbed his phone from where it was charging on the counter before going back to his room.

John closed his door and collapsed onto his bed, staring at the faintly glowing stars on the ceiling. Nothing felt wrong. Nothing felt off. It was just another night, just another where he was in his room and Alex was writing something, and everything was fine.

He sat up, reaching across the bed for his phone. He unlocked it and scrolled through to Alex’s contact, silently reading the last few texts he had sent him before typing another.

Saturday, May 13  
**To Alex**  
**9:45 pm**  
Hey  
Will you at least answer me?  
You should have been able to charge your phone by now

John paused in his typing and stared at the screen for a minute. It went black. He clicked it back on and pressed call.

The dial tone played once, twice, three times. John stopped counting and bit his lip while he waited.

_The number you have called is not available at this time. If you wish to leave a message, wait for the tone._

“Hey, Alex, uh…” John stood up as he spoke and took a few steps toward the center of his room. “Can you call me back? Or text me or whatever?”

He didn’t know what else to say, and clicked to end the call. He stared at the black screen for a moment, waiting for it to light up with a call or a text. When it didn’t, he clicked it on again, swiping to his messages.

 **To Alex**  
**9:48 pm**  
Alex  
You never take this long to respond

He clicked the call button again, waiting as the dial tone sounded. It went to voicemail, and he didn’t wait for the recorded voice to finish before before he hung up and tried again.

And again. And again. And again.

 **To Alex**  
**9:51 pm**  
Alex just pick up

He bit his lip harder and clicked call once more, waited for the call to go through, waited to hear Alex’s tired voice on the other end of the line.

_The number you have called is not available at this time. If you wish—_

He tapped the end call button roughly and threw the phone down onto his bed. The metallic taste of blood lingered on his lips from where his teeth had pressed too hard. He ran a hand through his already tangled curls and winced at the pain in his scalp when his fingers caught on a knot.

John realized was pacing again, moving absently around his room. He stared at the floor, breathing hard and trying to take in everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

He wanted to scream.

Alex wasn’t supposed to take this long to answer. The apartment wasn’t supposed to be quiet, and John wasn’t supposed to be alone. Alex wasn’t supposed to leave John without answers, he wasn’t supposed to be gone, and everything was supposed to be fine.

John stopped moving and took a breath. And another. He shook out his hands and exhaled slowly.

He was fine.

Alex was fine.

Everything was going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Updates are probably every two weeks because school is a thing for the next month and a half and I'm also a perfectionist so I need time to write chapters.


	2. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks was a long time for me to wait, but I'll survive.
> 
> But honestly, all the comments on chapter one made me so happy. Like... I was sitting at my desk grinning to hard. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments. <3

Was everything fine?

John wasn’t sure. He went to his classes, talked to his friends, texted or called Alex most days. There was never an answer, never an end to the dial tone on the calls or the minutes ticking by between his messages and Alex’s. He saw the missing posters on campus and around the city, torn but still readable, and each one was a punch to the gut.

It felt a little more real now.

He had managed to convince himself that everything would be fine, that Alex would come back after a day or two, and everything would go back to normal. But that hadn’t happened. The apartment was still too quiet, and John found himself looking up from his textbooks and opening his mouth to say something only to come face to face with an empty room.

Angelica and John had gone to talk to the detectives about two weeks after the original meeting, at the end of May. The detectives had called Angelica, and Angelica had called John, and since they were the only two who weren’t in class at the time, they walked the short distance in the warm summer air.

Nothing was different. Not really. The lobby was busier in the middle of the day than it had been that Friday night; a few officers talked to resigned women in handcuffs, and a couple of men in suits, presumably lawyers, walked quickly across the gray tiles, case files in one hand and phones against their ears. The man at the desk wasn’t there, and John had absently wondered if he was tired of working the night shift.

Someone ushered John and Angelica through the same halls, into the same small room as before. John had sat down in one of the chairs, carefully avoiding the sharp edge of the metal table, and didn’t move. He hadn’t been getting much sleep the past few weeks, and there was nothing he could be doing. He didn’t even know why the detectives had called because Angelica had refused to tell him.

He stared at the walls and recounted the cracks, trying to decide if the one in the far corner had been there two weeks ago. The clock on the wall ticked quietly, not disturbing the careful silence as it counted the seconds until the door opened and one of the detectives walked in.

It was the taller one, Detective Greene, and he smiled at the two as he shut the door.

“John, correct? And Angelica?”

Angelica nodded, leaning forward in her chair. “You said you wanted to update us on the case?”

John sat up straighter. “Did you find something?” He tried to ignore the note of desperation in his voice, but he knew it was there. He needed to know that Alex was okay, and he was tired of waiting.

Detective Greene took a breath. “Well…” He pursed his lips and paused, breaking eye contact with John as he glanced at the folder in his hands. “We’ve been talking to a couple of people, trying to figure out where your friend was when he disappeared.”

He paused, and John found himself leaning forward, waiting for his next words. “And?”

The detective looked up at him again. “We talked to the owner of the bodega, and he doesn’t remember seeing your friend that night.”

John stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Alexander didn’t make it to the store before he disappeared.” Greene didn’t break eye contact this time, as if gauging John’s reaction to his words. “He was likely kidnapped on his way there.”

John let the man’s words sink in. Alex had disappeared before he had walked three blocks. No one had seen him after he left the apartment. They still hadn’t found him.

He felt Angelica’s hand on his arm after a moment, grounding him, and he turned to her when she spoke.

“So you’re sure it’s a kidnapping then.” It wasn’t a question anymore, just a statement of fact. “There aren’t any other possible options?”

Greene nodded. “That’s what it looks like, yes. You said he wasn’t suicidal, and that he wasn’t looking to disappear, so this is our only other option.”

John turned back to the detective. “Alex would have fought back,” he said quietly, before Greene could speak again. “Was there any…” He swallowed. “Any blood?”

Greene shook his head. “That’s the problem.” He opened the folder and took out a piece of paper, covered in haphazard, scribbled notes. “We haven’t found anyone who saw him before he disappeared, so we’re not entirely sure where to search.” He picked up another paper. “We’ve been combing the area within a few miles of your apartment and the bodega, but so far, there’s been nothing.”

He put the papers back and placed the folder on the table. “Now, have you thought of anything you think would help us with this case? Anyone who would want to hurt Alexander, anywhere he might have gone?”

Angelica shook her head. “Like we said last time, he argues with a lot of people, but I don’t think any of them would want to hurt him.” She paused. “And as far as we know, there’s no one else he would go to.”

“He didn’t have anyone else to go to,” John whispered.

Greene leaned over the table. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

John shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

The detective nodded, and stood up. “Alright. We’ll let you know if we find anything, okay?”

John nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He watched the detective walk out of the room, his suit creased neatly in the back. The door closed behind him, and Angelica stood up.

“Come on, we should go.”

John stood up silently and followed Angelica out through the hallways, dodging lawyers and officers as they walked through the lobby. John slid his phone from his pocket and clicked it on, trying not to be too disappointed when there was nothing from Alex.

Angelica turned to him, and he slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Do you want to get lunch or something?”

“I have to study.” Not entirely a lie; he wasn’t taking summer classes, and he liked to keep up on his notes from the past semester so he didn’t have to cram in September, but he wasn’t planning on studying today.

Angelica pursed her lips but didn’t comment. “You sure you don’t want company on the walk back?”

“Yeah, I- I’ll see you later.”

Angelica looked like she wanted to say something, the look from before back on her face, but she nodded and turned away. John watched her walk away, her hair swaying slightly in the breeze, before he turned and started the walk back to his apartment.

John usually enjoyed wandering around the city, especially when he had someone to talk to, but today he didn’t want to talk to anyone. Angelica had offered him company, sure, but truthfully, he didn’t want her company. He didn’t want her to be there as he looked carefully down every street he passed as he got closer to the apartment, hoping to find some clue as to where Alex had gone. He didn’t want her to tell him that he wouldn’t find anything.

He finally unlocked his apartment door — he hadn’t registered walking up the stairs — and stepped inside. He tossed his keys somewhere on the counter, grabbed his anatomy book from where he had dropped it on the floor after Angelica called, and walked toward his room. He paused outside Alex’s door.

What if he had gone with Alex that night? Would things have turned out any differently?

John shook his head. “You can’t do anything,” he said aloud. “There’s nothing you can do.”

He was talking to himself now. John sighed and turned away from Alex’s open door. Great.

Logically though, he knew there was nothing he could do right now. The detectives had no leads, no evidence, and John probably knew less than they did at this point. He groaned and fell back onto his bed, squeezed his eyes shut.

The last two weeks on campus before break started had been hell. Everyone knew what happened after about three days, from both the posters and the gossip that spread like wildfire. When John walked to and from his classes, he could hear all the whispers, all the students talking about Alex, all the questions and all the hypotheticals.

He hated it.

He didn’t need people talking about Alex, whispering as if John couldn’t hear every word they said. He heard every syllable, saw every look directed his way. He wasn’t oblivious. He didn’t need people talking as if Alex would be gone forever. Alex wasn’t gone, he just… wasn’t with John.

They’d been away from each other before, for at least part of every summer. It wasn’t like they were completely dependant on each other, but they were together so often that it was weird for one of them to be gone for so long.

He missed seeing Alex’s face every day, missed telling him to stop drinking too much coffee, missed their stupid texts at all hours. Speaking of...

He opened his eyes and reached into his pocket, fishing out his phone. He stared at his reflection in the screen for a second; he looked exhausted, like Alex did after he stayed up until two to perfect a paper that he already had drafted three times. John ran a hand across his face, relishing the pressure from his fingers on his tired eyes, and unlocked his phone.

His fingers moved with a mind of their own, automatically finding his messages to Alex. All the text bubbles were blue, John’s own words mocking him from the screen with none of the usual yellow bubbles containing Alex’s paragraphs interrupting the endless sea of blue. John hesitated for a second before typing out another message.

Monday, May 29  
**To Alex**  
**2:12 pm**  
The detectives said you didn’t get to the store  
Where’d you go Alex?

He waited for a moment, tapping the screen before it could dim, and stared at the blue bubbles on his screen.

**To Alex**  
**2:15 pm**  
Are you hurt  
They haven’t found any signs of a struggle but you would fight back  
I know you would  
Are you okay?

He waited for a few moments before he stopped tapping, letting the screen fade to black, and resisted the urge to throw his phone across the room.

It was fine. Alex was fine.

* * *

_One Month._

Almost three weeks after they had talked to the detectives for the second time, and there was still nothing. Detective Knox had called Angelica, telling her that they hadn’t found Alex’s phone. That was one of the reasons John was still texting him. The other reason was that he refused to give up the hope that Alex would answer.

Right now, John was leaning on the counter, his forearms resting on the surface as he typed out a few texts to Alex. His friends were gathered around his coffee table in the living room. They’d been doing that a lot recently; John and Alex’s apartment had become the designated hang out spot for some reason, probably because they had been the only ones living off campus sophomore year, but now their meetings were different. They didn’t talk about it much, but they were all missing Alex. They needed someone to talk to instead of being alone with their thoughts.

Friday, June 16  
**To Alex**  
**11:54 am**  
Aleeex  
Where are you  
They’re planning for pride and idk if I’m gonna go

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to Pride. The parade was one of his favorite things about being in New York, seeing all the colors and the people celebrating and having fun. He just didn’t want to go without Alex.

“Okay, so Peggy is getting face paint, Herc is making those little flags again and we all have our clothing sorted out, oui?” John heard someone shift in the other room, and then Laf’s voice directed itself toward him. “John, you can probably borrow one of my shirts, if—”

“I’m not going,” John said abruptly, his fingers hovering over the keyboard for a second before he continued to type. His friends fell silent, and he looked up. “What?”

Laf pursed his lips, as if searching for the right words. “John…”

John shook his head, cutting him off. “I don’t want to go.”

Herc looked at him, eyebrows furrowed as he frowned. “Why not? You’ve gone every other year.”

John looked down at his phone and sighed. “It’s… I just don’t, okay?” He pushed himself away from the counter. “Just drop it.”

He didn’t look at his friends as he walked around the counter and toward his room, ignoring the feel of their eyes on his back. He glanced at Alex’s room, empty and dark, before walking into his own and shutting the door. He crossed the room and sat down on the floor, his back against his bed frame.

The only reason he went to Pride every year was because of Alex. Alex had dragged an insecure, nineteen-year-old John to the celebrations after their freshman year, and it was the most stunning thing John had ever experienced. Their group had gone together the year after, and now it was basically tradition. But the first year with Alex had been special.

This year, though, everything was different. Alex was gone, and his friends still insisted on going to Pride. John figured that they knew why he didn’t want to go, even though he hadn’t said anything. It would have felt weird without Alex there, without his endless energy and enthusiasm.

John looked back down at his phone, absent of a blinking light to signify new messages. He let his hand fall to the floor, dropping his phone on the carpet.

There was a light knock on his door. He debated whether he wanted to talk to anyone, but he figured whoever it was would let themself in anyway. He called out for the person to come in, and the door opened to reveal Lafayette. He stepped gingerly inside and closed the door.

“Hey, Laf.”

His friend took a step forward. “Mon ami, we did not mean to push you. We just want you to have a good time, that is all.”

John looked up at him, smiling slightly. “Yeah, I know.” He looked away. He felt kind of guilty for walking out of the room, but he didn’t need anyone nagging him to do something he didn’t want to, either.

Laf pulled John’s desk chair toward the center of the room, sitting down to face John. “l know you are worried, but that does not mean you have to stay here all day.” He spoke tentatively, as though he were talking to a small child. John knew he was choosing his words carefully, and that he would most likely not enjoy what would come out of the Frenchman’s mouth. “Alex would—”

There it was.

“Just drop it Laf,” he interrupted, letting his head fall onto his knees. He reached out blindly to grab his phone off the floor; no new messages. He put it back down. “It’s fine.”

“John…”

John stood up abruptly, glaring at his friend. “Laf, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” He clenched his hand into a fist. “Leave it alone.”

Laf stood up. “Alright.” He walked toward John and then paused. “You are still welcome to join us, if you wish.” He put a hand on John’s shoulder, and John looked up. “Do not be a stranger, John.”

John waited until he heard the front door close, and resumed his position on the floor and leaned back, feeling the metal frame of his bed dig into his back. He picked his phone up again and unlocked it.

**To Alex**  
**12:17 pm**  
Come home Alex  
I miss you

He sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the edge of the mattress.

One month, three days, and nine hours.

Why did this have to be so hard?

* * *

A week came and went quicker than John would have expected, and then it was Sunday, and everyone was out except for him. He had almost texted Herc and Laf that morning before he realized that they wouldn’t be around for most of the day.

John stayed in the apartment for a few hours, looking over some of his notes from his classes the previous semester and trying to ignore the heavy beat of the music coming from somewhere in the city. Pride was a huge thing; he knew this, and yet he still tried to ignore the distant sounds of music and laughter from outside the apartment.

He gave up studying after a while, leaning back from his hunched position and feeling the back of his head hit the wall. He wasn’t going to get anything done while his thoughts were occupied with everything except anatomy, so he let his mind wander. As always, he ended up back at Pride, and back at Alex.

He briefly entertained the idea of texting one of his friends and joining them before he abandoned the thought. He didn’t want to talk to people today. His fingers betrayed him, wandering to his phone. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to people; it was that he didn’t want to talk to people who weren’t Alex.

This was something they had done together for two years. _It would have been three if you didn’t ditch your friends today,_ his brain supplied. He ignored it. All he wanted was his best friend. It wasn’t the most outrageous thing to wish for.

John went through the motions of making dinner, attempting to read, and stopping himself from texting his friends. After a few hours, his phone buzzed, and he felt his heart skip a beat. The logical part of his brain countered that; why would Alex answer now, after an entire month?

He tried not to be too disappointed when he saw that it was just Peggy.

Sunday, June 25  
**From Peggy**  
**7:57 pm**  
we missed you today asshole  
(Image attached)

He opened the picture to find his friends smiling at the camera, each of them covered in glitter and various shades of paint. He smiled for a second, glancing over the expressions of happiness on his friends’ faces, but he didn’t respond.

After another hour of doing God knows what — his mind was elsewhere; he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing — John gave up on trying to distract himself from his thoughts and got up, grabbing his phone and keys before he walked out of the apartment. He needed some air.

He walked slowly, enjoying the summer night air as he wandered down familiar streets. He could hear music coming from the radios of a few cars that passed, the laughter of people still out late, and the occasional bark of a dog.

After a while of aimless walking, John found himself on a street covered in the remnants of Pride celebrations: glitter, stickers, streamers of every color imaginable. He sat down on the curb, carefully avoiding the shards of glass from a broken bottle, and watched a few couples making their way down the sidewalk. Two boys caught his eye; they were probably high school age, and walked hand in hand, trading shy glances and smiles every few feet. Their skin was speckled with glitter, and the taller one had a rainbow sticker on his cheek. John was suddenly thrown back to the first year with Alex, and he absently reached up to touch his face.

_“What do you mean you’ve never been to Pride?”_

_Alex was staring at John over the top of his computer, his eyes comically wide, and John held back a laugh. They had been discussing their plans for the summer, with both of them staying in New York for a few weeks before visiting the Schuylers’ beach house, and Alex had offhandedly mentioned the annual Pride parade near the end of June._

_John shrugged. “I didn’t have time last year, doing orientation and everything. And before that I didn’t even live in New York.”_

_Alex frowned. “Oh yeah.”_

_John shifted to face Alex. “And I’m pretty sure my dad doesn’t care that I’m gay, but I still wouldn’t have gone to one in South Carolina.”_

_Alex tipped his head in agreement. “I guess.” Suddenly, his face lit up, and leaned across the table as much as he could with his computer in the way. “You should come with me!”_

_John blinked. “Are- are you sure?”_

_Alex nodded frantically, closing his laptop and resting his elbows on top of the papers scattered in front of him. “Sure, why not? It’ll be fun.”_

_John signed. “I don’t know. I just…”_

_Alex placed his hand on top of John’s. “Hey, you said your dad doesn’t care, right? So nothing else matters. It’ll be okay.”_

_And at that moment, the excitement and hope in Alex’s eyes was enough to convince him._

_John grinned. “Okay. I’ll go.”_

_Alex’s grin was bright enough to light up the whole room._

_Two weeks later found them walking with crowds in an explosion of color. At some point, Alex had ended up with face paint across the entire left side of his face, and John was almost certain that he had glitter in his hair. John’s legs ached and they were both drenched in sweat, but he was happy._

_A few hours later, after the festivities had died down and the streets grew quiet, Alex and John continued to walk down the city streets, their shoulders brushing every so often. The setting sun cast faint shadows on the ground as people dressed in clothes of all colors wandered and talked._

_The two of them picked an empty spot on the curb, the asphalt under their feet littered with rainbow streamers, colorful stickers, and a layer of multicolored glitter sparkling under the flickering streetlights. John leaned his head on Alex’s shoulder, careful not to disturb the rainbow that had been painted on his cheek by some teenager. His eyes wandered, following some of the people walking down the sidewalk, and he caught a few smiles directed toward him and Alex._

_John shifted so he could look up at Alex’s face, which was still miraculously stained with pink and purple and blue paint. “I had fun today.”_

_Alex turned slowly to look down at him, not disturbing John’s head on his shoulder. “Yeah?”_

_John nodded and shifted closer. He felt Alex’s arm wrap around his back. “Thanks for taking me.”_

_Alex laughed. “Of course.”_

_John sat up, pulling away slightly. “No, you don’t understand.” He held eye contact with Alex for a second before dropping his gaze to stare at the glitter on the street. “I wouldn’t have ever gone to this if you didn’t take me.” He paused. “I mean, sure, my dad doesn’t care, but that doesn’t mean I was any less scared to come out.”_

_His eyes darted up for a second, as if to make sure Alex was still there, before he continued._

_“I was so scared, Alex, that... that people would judge me,” he whispered._

_He fell silent after that, waiting for Alex to say something. When he didn’t, John looked up._

_“I’m not going to judge you,” he said. John smiled slightly. “And if people want to judge you, then that’s their problem, not yours.”_

_Alex reached out a tentative arm, and John leaned into it, letting Alex pull him closer._

_“You and me, John,” he murmured. “You and me.”_

John smiled at the memory. He had finally met someone who could understand what he had been through, someone who could help him through things when it got hard. But that wouldn’t happen now.

He shook his head vigorously, clearing his thoughts as he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. It could happen, he just… he needed to be positive.

He watched the boys walk away, their laughter fading into the distance, and he sat quietly on the curb for a long moment before he pulled out his phone and dialed the only number he knew by heart.

* * *

Sunday, June 25  
**Missed call from John**  
**New Voicemail (1)**  
_Hey, Alex. Today was Pride. Everyone’s been planning for it for like a week, but I didn’t go. It… it felt weird. Without you. The... the colors would have been too dull. Remember you took me the summer after freshman year? That… that was the best I had felt in a while._  
_I went after though. I thought you might… show up at the parade or something today. I dunno, it was dumb. You... you wouldn’t leave for a month just to show up out of nowhere. I just… I just want you back. Is that too much to ask?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks for reading! Two more weeks. <3


	3. Empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow these two weeks were long.
> 
> I tried to write a bunch of chapters in advance, but school is still a thing for me and I've been really busy. So now I have to actually write more.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy this! I am quite proud of this chapter.

_Two Months_

Apparently, it was too much to ask.

John had called Detective Knox for an update on the case, and the man had informed him that they had released Alex’s information across state lines. Apparently, it was highly likely that Alex had been taken out of state, and this was standard protocol for a missing persons case. John had nodded along with the detective’s explanation and mumbled words of affirmation over the phone, and when the man told him that they were doing everything they could, John had thanked him quietly and hung up.

There was nothing he could do, he reminded himself. He couldn’t help search and he couldn’t make the detectives find evidence, but he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, either. So he was still at square one, and there were no paths for him to follow.

Everything was empty.

Saturday, July 1  
**To Alex**  
**10:13 am**  
What state are you in Alex  
The detectives said you’re probably not in New York

As always, he got no response. John was beginning to wonder if his phone was broken.

He knew it wasn’t. John’s friends still texted him, and their group chat was constantly active. During the summer, most of them went off and did their own thing, had their own plans, but everyone had stayed relatively close to the city for the past month. They hung out a lot, and although no one said it, they were all worried; scared even. They needed support even if they didn’t talk about Alex.

Laf hadn’t mentioned Alex’s name outright since the day he had tried to convince John to go to Pride, but John didn’t miss the careful looks that all of his friends shot in his direction. They were worried about him— without reason, in John’s opinion. He was fine.

The week after Pride had been a whirlwind of packing. The Schuyler sisters, of course, had invited the group to their family’s beach house upstate. It had become a yearly thing, everyone hanging out for a couple of weeks between visiting family and preparing to go back to school. John had been surprised to be invited the first year, and even though he and Alex hadn’t ended up going (they had still been straightening out the details with their new apartment), he still appreciated the sentiment.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Peggy bounced up behind John, interrupting his thoughts. She was the only one out of the three sisters who hadn’t told him that this trip would be good for him or asked him multiple times whether he would reconsider. She had invited him, and then she stayed away from the subject.

He appreciated that. He knew that his friends just wanted to distract him from his own thoughts, but he didn’t need another person to decide what was good for him, or tell him that everything was going to be okay. It had started to get annoying.

Peggy was staring at him expectantly. John could see his reflection in the sunglasses that rested in her curly hair, and he tried to smile.

“Sorry, Pegs, I- I’m not really up to it this year.”

He expected the smile to drop from her face, for the pity and the worry to worm its way into her gaze and replace the hopefulness. It didn’t. Peggy was amazing like that.

“Alrighty then.” She leaned forward on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck. “Text me if you get bored, okay?”

He wrapped his arms around her waist, closed his eyes, and let her curls tickle his nose as he took a deep breath. “I will.”

Once he had said his final goodbyes to his friends, and Angelica had not so subtly asked him to go with them, John walked aimlessly through the streets for a while. After taking several turns around the northern side of Central Park and avoiding his apartment, he ended up in front of the bodega a few blocks from their apartment.

_Three blocks._

Everything felt just a little more empty.

He stared at the unassuming building. Colorful posters crowded the tiny windows, advertising the fresh produce and low prices, and the bells above the door chimed tinnily as a customer stepped out. A crisp paper with bold type caught John’s eye, and he took a step toward the window.

It was the missing poster that the detectives had made for Alex the day after he disappeared. There was a short description at the top; height, hair and eye color, the clothes he was last seen wearing; and a phone number was highlighted in neon yellow at the bottom.

Between all the text was a photograph, printed in black and white. John remembered it well; Eliza had been taking photos of them for her photography class, and had somehow managed to get Alex to sit still for more than five seconds. She didn’t pose him much, just told him to sit in a certain spot in the library because the lighting was good, and took a few pictures. After she had developed them, she had shown them to John, and the sheer amount of emotion and energy that existed in Alex’s eyes even in a photograph had taken his breath away.

John’s fingers hit warm glass, and he realized that he had been reaching out to touch the picture. He took a shaky step back and felt his thighs slam into the metal trash can on the corner. Catching himself before he could fall, he turned quickly away from the cheerful blue and yellow awning and continued along the busy street, losing his thoughts in the noise of the cars as he walked.

They would find Alex, and everything would be fine.

* * *

For the next few nights, John lay awake in his bed, staring up at the glowing stars on the ceiling and listening to the distant explosions of the fireworks outside the apartment, the noise slightly muffled by the buzzing of the fan in his window.

John never slept well during the summer. Not only did the heat make him toss and turn — the air conditioning in their apartment wasn’t the best — his skin itched from mosquito bites, and people shot off fireworks for weeks before and after the Fourth of July. He and Alex would usually sit on the front steps or stand out on the fire escape and talk for hours until they started to fall asleep midway through their sentences, and then they would walk back inside and and collapse in John’s room, which was both the cooler and the neater of the two. That’s what they had done the summer after their freshman year.

_John turned over for what seemed like the hundredth time, and stared at the mocking red numbers on his alarm clock. He had been trying to fall asleep for two hours, but all he had succeeded in doing was tangling his hair and making himself hotter than he had been before. He sat up and shoved the minimal blankets off his chest and onto the floor before he flopped backward onto the mattress and groaned._

_Damn this summer heat._

_He heard a slight click as his door opened, and he looked over to see Alex’s head silhouetted in the doorway._

_“I didn’t think you were still awake,” Alex whispered. He pushed the door open a bit more and stepped inside. “Can’t sleep?”_

_John sat up and pushed his sweaty hair back from his face. “Nope. I’m way too hot.”_

_“Yeah you are.” Even though he couldn’t see Alex’s face, John could hear the smirk in his voice._

_John snorted and shook his head. “Shut up.”_

_Alex snickered. “Hey, I’m just calling it like I see it.” He paused, and then: “You wanna go sit outside?”_

_“Sure.” John stood up and pulled his tangled curls away from his face. He fumbled blindly across his nightstand for a hair tie and shoved his hair into a messy ponytail. “Let’s go.”_

_John grabbed his keys off the counter and locked the apartment door behind them before they walked down the stairs, trying not to wake up their neighbors. He held the rickety screen door open for Alex, and made sure it didn’t slam shut behind them._

_The humid summer air wasn’t as bad outside; there was a slight breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees and carried the sounds of faraway cars and people awake at one in the morning. The two of them sat a few steps up from the bottom, with John leaning against the bricks on the side of the stairs. The faint buzzing of cicadas echoed sporadically through the quiet street, and a stray cat skittered along the curb._

_“So.” Alex broke the silence first. “What do you think happens to us after we die?”_

_John looked over at him. “This is the conversation you want to have at one in the morning?_

_Alex shrugged. “Sure, why not?”_

_John rolled his eyes. “Well, I don’t. It sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King novel, or something.”_

_“All right then,” Alex said. He sat up and raised an eyebrow, a challenge in his eyes. “What do you suggest?”_

_“Uhh…” John bit his lip and stared across the street toward Central Park, as if the answer would pop out of the darkness. “Would you recognize me anywhere?” he said suddenly. “Like, if we didn’t talk for two years and then we saw each other again, or if we were in a different universe?”_

_Alex leaned back against the stairs. “Of course,” he answered easily. He tipped his chin toward John. “What about you?”_

_John kicked his feet across the stairs and knocked a few sticks down. He watched them roll slowly onto the sidewalk and sighed. “I mean… I like to think that I would,” he said slowly. How was he supposed to answer that question? He never wanted to lose his best friend, even if he’d only known Alex for just under a year._

_He shook his head. “No, I would. I definitely would.” He looked up, catching Alex’s gaze. “I would recognize you anywhere.”_

_Their conversation drifted to other random topics for the next two hours, their voices the only noise in the stillness that existed in the early hours of the morning. Eventually, John had no idea what they were even discussing, but Alex seemed to have endless thoughts on the subject._

_He waved his hands in front of John’s face. “Okay, but what if the—” He yawned, and his eyes started slipping closed, but he kept talking. “What if…”_

_He trailed off, yawning again, and John stood up. He stretched his arms above his head and grimaced when his back cracked. “We should probably go back inside before we fall asleep out here.”_

_Surprisingly, Alex didn’t protest._

_John opened the door and walked back inside, remembering at the last second to catch the handle before it could slam shut. The two of them made their way slowly up the stairs, trying not to trip over their own feet or make too much noise._

_Once John’s tired fingers had unlocked the door, Alex wandered back toward the hallway without a word, and John grabbed a glass of water before walking carefully through the dark hallway. He stopped in the doorway of his room and stared at Alex._

_“Why aren’t you in your own room?”_

_“I dunno.” Alex had already collapsed face-first onto John’s bed, and his words were muffled by the mattress. “Your room is cooler.”_

_John sighed. “Fine, you can stay.” He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it somewhere on the floor to be picked up in the morning. “Move over.”_

_Alex complied, and John stretched out across the bed. He didn’t bother pulling any of the blankets up. He closed his eyes and drifted dizzily between consciousness and sleep._

_“Hey, John?” Alex’s words were slurred, but still loud enough that John could hear him over the buzz of his fan._

_He opened his eyes, blinking back the heaviness that begged him to close them again. “What?”_

_“What if we were reincarnated? You know, with different bodies. Would you recognize me then?”_

_John reached out and shoved him gently in the chest. “Shut up and go to sleep.”_

_Alex laughed quietly. “All right.”_

_Alex closed his eyes, and after a moment, John did too. He fell asleep to the sound of Alex’s even breathing and the soft buzz of the fan next to his head._

It was still too hot to sleep.

John had tried desperately to ignore the explosions of fireworks outside the apartment; his fan helped with that. But it was still hot, he was still sweating, and his mind was doing everything except relaxing.

He shoved the thin sheets off his chest and picked up his tank top from where he had thrown it on the floor earlier, fed up with the oppressive heat. He pulled it over his head as he walked across his room and made his way into the kitchen. After hitting his ankle on two chairs and the table, he dug around in the drawers for a moment before he found the box of sparklers from a year ago and a lime green lighter that they had because Alex insisted that he always burned his fingers when he used matches.

Carefully avoiding the chairs on his way back across the kitchen, John walked into the living room and took the fan out of the window before climbing out onto the fire escape, dropping the bag onto the metal platform and swatting at the mosquitoes that landed on his skin.

He clicked the lighter and held it up to the end of one of the the sparklers. He watched it flame to life and fizzle smoke as it slowly burned down, twirling it in his fingers while he let his thoughts wander. As always, his musings turned to Alex.

If Alex were there, John wouldn’t be sitting alone on the fire escape. He wouldn’t be on the fire escape at all. The two of them would have gone with the rest of their friends, and they’d be relaxing on the beach, watching the fireworks from across the water and maybe shooting off some of their own. Alex would be chasing him around on the sand, waving the rainbow sparklers in his face while John laughed and dodged away, and he would probably try to shove Alex into the water if he got too close. Angelica would yell at them to stop messing around before someone got hurt, and Peggy would laugh at her while shouting encouragements at John. They would end up falling onto the sand after their sparklers died out, and then they’d spit the stuff from their mouths while they laughed.

But Alex wasn’t there.

Alex was missing.

John knew this. He had texted or called Alex’s phone every day for the last two months and three weeks. He had talked to the detectives multiple times and told them everything he thought he knew. He was the one who noticed Alex’s absence every day, and he was the one who had to go back to an empty apartment every night.

But now, something in his brain had finally decided to connect, and every single thought he had managed to deny forced itself out of the tiny box in the back of his mind. Alex had been gone for two months. What did that mean for their chances of finding him? What if he was hurt? What if he was dead?

_What if he was dead?_

John froze, and his hand jerked, releasing the sparkler from where he held it between his fingers. He watched the sparks fizzle out as it fell toward the street, and struggled to control his suddenly shallow breathing. He sank down until he was kneeling on the fire escape platform, ignoring the painful indents that the metal grating left on his skin.

No. Alex couldn’t be dead. He… he wasn’t dead. John shoved his fingers into his hair and let his nails dig into his scalp, as if they could tear the thoughts from his head and make the nagging voice shut up.

The detectives hadn’t found any blood, or any signs of a struggle.

_They just don’t know where to look._

Alex would put up a fight; John knew he would. Alex had been through too much to just give up.

_Would he? Maybe he wanted to give up._

John dug his nails in harder, wincing slightly. Alex wasn’t the one who wanted to give up. Alex wasn’t the one who needed help all the time, and Alex wasn’t the one who, at one point, had seriously thought about giving up.

John pulled out his phone and gripped it tightly in his shaking hands. He clicked to his contacts, not knowing if he would be able to type in the individual numbers, and held it up to his ear, praying he wouldn’t drop it and watch it fall to the unforgiving concrete dozens of floors below.

* * *

Tuesday, July 4  
**Missed call from John**  
**New Voicemail (1)**  
_Alex, you... you’ve been missing for a month and three weeks, and I... I just realized that… that you could… that you might… I’m so worried that we’ll never find you, or that you’re hurt, or that... that you’re dead, and I... I don’t want to think about that. I’m not going to give up, or anything, but I… I need to know that you’re okay._

* * *

_Three Months_

The rest of July was spent studying mind-numbing notes, wandering the neighborhood, and avoiding the heat as much as possible. John couldn’t stand staying in the empty apartment by himself. The Schuylers were upstate with their family, Laf was in France, and Herc had gone with him, so John ended up walking around Central Park most days.

He checked in with the detectives every week, and there was still nothing. The file was empty, John’s received text log was empty, and the words of solace that the detectives spoke were empty. There was nothing for John to hope for after so many weeks of searching, and yet, he still hoped that something would come up full.

Alex would tell him that he was too optimistic, that he was setting high expectations and would end up being disappointed, but what else could he do? Optimism was the only thing keeping him from breaking down like he had on the Fourth of July.

By the time August came around, John was tired. After his friends had returned from their trips, they had started hanging out again. John had barely contacted them for a month, save for the occasional two-word response to Peggy’s check ins or Laf’s pictures from France, and when they asked how he had been, he smiled and said he was bored, and they didn’t talk about Alex.

They spent the last few weeks of August preparing to go back to school. Angelica had holed herself up in her apartment to cram study for one of her advanced government classes, Peggy and Eliza were making the most of the last days of summer, Herc was spending extra hours working on costumes for the fall production in the theatre department, and Lafayette was still in France for a week, so John tried to do something.

He didn’t really know what he actually did for those last two weeks, but suddenly it was September, and he was walking across campus, holding a worn copy of Macbeth while he tried to find a quiet spot on the quad.

“Mister Laurens.”

John startled and turned around at the sound of his name. George Washington, head of the history department, was standing behind him.

“Professor Washington, good morning.”

Washington was one of the favorite teachers on campus. He had been a general in a war — John wasn’t sure which one — and after he stepped down, he had become a professor. With Alex majoring in both history and English, John had heard quite a few stories about the man, and it was obvious that Alex admired him a great deal.

With that being said, John had only spoken to him a handful of times, and on a campus of thirty-two thousand students, it wasn’t likely that professors knew students that weren’t in their classes.

But here he was, face to face with Alex’s favorite professor, and he had no idea why.

Washington coughed and straightened his tie. “How are you doing?”

John frowned, thrown off by the gentle concern in the man’s voice. “I’m all right, I guess,” he said. “Just getting back into classes and everything.”

The professor nodded, shifting his weight. “I heard about what happened to Alexander,” he said, and John looked down at his book, running his fingers along the spine. “I know you two were… quite close, and I just… I wanted to check on you.”

John swallowed and dragged his gaze back up to meet the professor’s. “Thank you, sir,” he said quietly.

“I know I’m not your department advisor,” Washington continued, “but if you need something, I would be happy to help.”

John bit his lip, swallowed back the growing lump in his throat, and nodded. Washington’s words weren’t empty; they were the complete opposite. They were full of actual emotion, and they meant something, unlike most of the reassurances John had heard in the past four months,

Apparently having nothing else to say, Washington reached out and placed his hand on John’s shoulder for a second before walking past him. John stood on the sidewalk for a moment, and after he had gathered his composure, he turned around and continued walking.

John ended up sitting on a concrete benches along one of the smaller paths, the stone warmed by the sun. He dropped his bag at his feet and opened his book to where he had left off the day before. It was his third reread that week.

_Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more._

He had been trying to find some distraction from the quiet emptiness of the apartment, and Shakespeare was as good as anything else he could have done. Admittedly, he had been looking for bits of Alex in the play; he had once likened Alex to Macbeth, and now he needed something to tell him that Alex was still… there.

Shakespeare’s words compared life to a shadow, and man to an actor. You never knew when your time would be up, and, like an actor, Alex only held parts of Macbeth, and Macbeth only held parts of Alex. He was a character, not a whole person.

Macbeth wasn’t a replacement for Alex.

John sighed, closing the book and tracing his fingers along the elegant cursive title. His eyes drifted to his phone, sitting at the top of his open bag; the screen was dark and the light at the top didn’t blink. He didn’t want to check it, but he didn’t want to think about literary comparisons anymore. Macbeth died at the end anyway; what did that say about Alex’s current situation?

_Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings._

He picked up his phone.

Tuesday, September 12  
**To Alex**  
**12:11 pm**  
I’m reading Macbeth again  
Remember how I compared him to you?  
It wasn’t that accurate  
I want the real you back  
At least answer me Alex

He squinted at the text conversation through the glare on the dim screen, waiting for something.

Nothing. The other side of the conversation remained empty.

John dropped the phone back into his bag, hearing it thump against his med textbook. Macbeth slid off his lap and onto the ground as he dropped his head into his hands and rested his elbows on his knees. Four months. It had been four months since Alex disappeared.

_Let us seek out some desolate shade and there / Weep our sad bosoms empty._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me too much. I like Macbeth, and I had to quote it. It just worked.
> 
> I got a comment on the last chapter about the perspective at the end. It did go back to Alex's phone, so technically not Alex's perspective, but close enough. The phone is important.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the feedback so far. Your comments make me really happy. <3


	4. When You're Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right. I finished this yesterday, close to midnight. I barely wrote any of this in the past two weeks because of school, but I'm on break now and I have a lot more time to write. But I wanted to get this up today, keep my update schedule, even if it is kinda late.
> 
> Special thanks for BlazingStarInInkyBlackness for the emergency beta read. <3

_Four Months_

The hollow feeling wouldn’t disappear. Not from John’s chest, not from the apartment, and not from campus. He had given up on his most recent attempt at rereading Macbeth.

September passed by slowly. John managed to scrape by on little to no sleep every day, but it was getting harder to pass it off, especially after he had come close to dropping several marginally expensive tools in one of his labs. Everyone knew what had happened back in the spring, and John was sure that they at least guessed at what was causing his change in attitude. He got enough pitying looks as it was; he didn’t need any extra comments from his teachers, not that it really mattered. Other than Washington, none of the teachers had commented on Alex’s absence. It was probably more of a matter of professionalism than one of indifference, but John was grateful for it. He didn’t know if he could handle another adult offering their sympathies. He still hadn’t taken Washington up on his offer, and he didn’t think he was going to. He didn’t know what he needed right now, other than Alex, and he would probably break down if he did go talk to the professor. So it was better that he didn’t.

It was weird, being back at school without Alex. John no longer received texts at two in the morning requesting he proofread a paper that wasn’t due for another month. He didn’t have to drag Alex out to breakfast in the morning in order to get him to consume something other than coffee, didn’t have to listen to him complain about Jefferson every other day after debate practice.

Speaking of Jefferson, the man had somewhat integrated himself into their friend group. It wasn’t that unusual, since he was friends with Laf and Angelica after all, but John wasn’t used to being in the same room as Thomas Jefferson; at least, not for very long. They had had a few classes together before, and John had talked to him a couple of times, but Jefferson and Alex got along as well as fire and water. They argued constantly, disagreeing on every topic under the sun, and some of them weren’t even relevant. John distinctly remembered one time the two of them had almost thrown punches over the financial stability of the United States economy after the Revolutionary War. Jefferson was also the one who usually stormed out of the room in the middle of Alex’s tirades, much to Alex’s enjoyment, so John didn’t really talk to him outside of class.

Jefferson had been on one of Columbia’s exchange programs to France last semester, so he hadn’t been around when Alex disappeared. After he found out what had happened, presumably from Lafayette or Angelica, or maybe from the neverending gossip that floated around campus, he hadn’t been rude or made any comments about it. John was so used to Alex and Jefferson being volatile and argumentative that he was mildly surprised when the man came up to him to offer his condolences. It wasn’t as if Jefferson was needlessly rude. Sure, he could be pretentious sometimes, and he and Alex argued more often than they didn’t, but they didn’t hate each other to the point where one wished ill upon the other.

Their little group had been studying a few weeks after classes had started. Laf had invited Jefferson to join them, which wasn’t a bad thing, but John wasn’t used to having a normal conversation with the man because he couldn’t get a word in edgewise when Alex was around.

He had ended up beside Jefferson at the table, and the conversation had been stilted and awkward. John had excused himself shortly after, saying he needed a quieter place to study. In reality, he didn’t know what to do with himself when he wasn’t dragging Alex away from an argument with Thomas Jefferson.

Peggy’s twenty-first birthday was one of the more exciting things that happened that month. She dragged them all to a bodega-turned-bar off Columbus and 88th, promptly challenged Herc to a game that involved shots, and hit on at least three people within the hour. Needless to say, she was lucky she didn’t have classes the next day, and it was more than likely that she would get an lecture about responsible drinking from Angelica in the morning.

Laf and Herc had walked back to their apartment, and Eliza had called a cab for herself and her sisters, apologizing to John all the while for leaving him alone. John told her not to worry about it, wished Peggy one last happy birthday, and slowly walked back to his apartment, along the west side of Central Park. It was quiet at night, and the chilly fall wind blew John’s hair into his face. He pushed it back, pulled his jacket further up on his neck, and kept walking.

By the time John made it back to the apartment building, it was half past ten. He couldn’t really feel his face, just from the biting wind, and he was grateful to walk up the innumerable flights of stairs to the warmth of their apartment.

Dark and empty, just as he left it.

* * *

Tuesday, September 19  
**To Alex**  
**10:37 pm**  
Today was Peggy’s birthday  
You knew that though  
We went to a bar  
I kept expecting to see you doing shots with her

* * *

John let his book slide off his lap as he sat on the metal fire escape. It was unusually chilly for the middle of October, and he rubbed his arms in an effort to warm himself up, wishing he had grabbed his sweater off the chair in his room.

Alex had always hated the cold.

_“Winter is a creation of the devil,” Alex mumbled, his words muffled by the thick scarf he had looped around his neck. “Why can’t it just end already?”_

_Alex had decided that he wanted coffee, claiming the shop halfway across campus was the only one he wanted to drink, because they made it with cinnamon. So he had dragged John out into the cold, and promptly regretted that decision, apparently, as they trudged along the concrete paths, the rock salt crunching under their boots._

_John scoffed, kicking at a clump of ice. “What do you mean? Winter is great.”_

_Alex stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at John as if he had two heads. “Are you serious? It’s so cold, and it feels like you’ll never be warm again.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and shifted his scarf away from his mouth. “And you have to wear so many layers that you can barely move. Or talk.”_

_John laughed, holding out his arms. “I have, like, two layers on right now, and I’m perfectly fine.”_

_Alex snorted. “Lies and slander, Laurens. You came from South Carolina, and you’re as cold as I am; you just won’t admit it.”_

_“I’m not!” At Alex’s skeptical look, John pulled off his gloves, holding them in one hand while he pressed his fingers to Alex’s face. “See? Warm.”_

_Alex snatched the gloves from his grip. “Mine now,” he said with finality, pulling them on. “And your hands don’t count anyway.”_

_John shrugged and kept walking, his hands now in his pockets. “Okay.”_

_“Wait, no, come back!”_

_John slowed his pace, listening to Alex hurrying to catch up to him, and then he was being yanked backward by his elbow. He managed to keep his balance on the slick sidewalk, and then Alex’s gloved hands were fumbling to undo the buttons on his coat._

_“Alex, what are you doing?”_

_“I need to see if you’re actually warm,” Alex stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He continued to mess with the buttons on John’s coat._

_John stepped backward. “I don’t think so.”_

_Alex held on to his coat. “I think yes. I need to know that I’m right.”_

_“No.” John took another step back, and Alex took another step forward. “If you take off my coat, then I’ll be cold.”_

_Alex’s lips quirked up into a smirk, and he kept his gaze on John’s coat as he undid two more buttons. “I’ll just have to warm you up then, won’t I?”_

_John groaned and let his head fall back as Alex undid the last few buttons. “Jesus christ.”_

_Alex cackled, and John looked back at him in time to watch him pull the gloves off with his teeth._

_“Seriously? I just bought those.” John yanked them away and pulled them over his hands. “Mine now.”_

_Alex shrugged, still grinning, and planted his palms flat against John’s chest. He blinked. “What the hell?” He pulled his hands away for a second before reaching back out._

_John stepped backward, out of his reach. “See? I win,” he declared, buttoning the coat back up._

_Alex pouted and shoved his hands in his pockets. “How are you so warm?”_

_“Magic.” John wiggled his fingers, and Alex laughed. “Let’s get coffee.”_

It wasn’t nearly as cold as that day in December had been, but it was getting there. Knowing Alex, he’d complain from October to March about the less-than-suitable mainland temperatures, and John would quip right back about Alex’s weak Caribbean soul despite the fact that he had lived in New York for several years longer than John had.

John pulled his phone from his pocket, absently gripping it tighter as he remembered how high off the ground he was, and let his slowly numbing fingers type out a message.

Tuesday, October 17  
**To Alex**  
**10:27 pm**  
It’s getting colder Alex  
You hate this weather  
Just come home

He half hoped that Alex would walk in and say that this, everything that had happened in the past five months, had all been a joke. He hoped that Angelica was correct in her supposition that there was someone Alex would go to that they didn’t know about. He hoped that Alex, wherever he might be, was warm and safe.

* * *

A week passed. The temperatures steadily declined until it was almost too cold to keep the windows open at night. It should have been easier to sleep, but Friday night came and John found himself lying awake in bed.

His inability to sleep at night wasn’t anything new; he had almost gotten used to it after five months. He didn’t know if it was his thoughts keeping him awake, or some physical need making him think that every shift in the old apartment building, every late-night footstep in the hall, was Alex coming back.

He started drifting off around eleven fifty; he hadn’t gotten a suitable amount of sleep in days, and his body was probably ready to shut down at this point, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. His breathing had just evened out when his phone lit up on the nightstand, and his eyes shot open. His friends didn’t usually text him this late.

He almost knocked his phone off the edge when he tried to grab it, leaning on his elbow as he entered his password.

Saturday, October 28  
**From Peggy**  
**12:00 am**  
happy birthday you dork  
youre so old  
heres some turtles  
(Gif attached)

John stared at Peggy’s name for a second, holding the phone loosely in his hand, and then let his arm fall back onto the mattress.

It was his birthday. He was twenty-two.

John hadn’t forgotten his birthday. Not exactly. It had just slipped his mind for a second. Between school and worrying about Alex, John didn’t really think that his birthday was all that important in the grand scheme of things.

He clicked on the gif from Peggy, grinning slightly at the softshell turtle that walked across his screen, and then clicked his phone off without a reply. It wasn’t that he was ungrateful for the birthday wishes and turtles, but why couldn’t it just be Alex? Just one time.

His phone lay forgotten on the edge of the mattress, and John drifted off to thoughts of turtles and thoughts of Alex.

He got several more birthday wishes the next morning, all with strings of emojis or funny pictures of him with his friends, and he replied to them all, but none of them were from Alex.

 **From Angelica**  
**2:12 pm**  
Happy birthday John!  
Can Laf and I come over in an hour or so to set up?

Angelica had suggested a few weeks ago that John do something for his birthday. And it had really been less of a suggestion and more of a decision where John’s opinion wasn’t relevant, so he couldn’t have done anything to stop them anyway.

He knew his friends were just trying to make him feel better, trying to distract him even if they weren’t subtle about it. It wasn’t working, and he was tired of people telling him to stop worrying. Sure, worrying wouldn’t accomplish anything, but there wasn’t anything else he could do, and he couldn’t exactly turn off his emotions with the push of a button.

 **To Angelica**  
**2:15 pm**  
Yeah sure

John put his phone down on the table, face up, and sighed.

It was fine. He could deal with company for a few hours.

* * *

Three hours later, and John kind of wanted everyone to leave.

He hadn’t been able to check his phone every minute for the hour and a half that Laf and Angelica had spent setting up because he knew that if he had, they’d tell him to stop worrying and come help them with food or decorations. So he’d kept it in his pocket and resisted the habitual pull to run his fingers along the side and press the tiny power button to check for messages, occupying his hands and his thoughts with one of his organic chemistry textbooks. Carbonyl compound diagrams were mind-numbingly boring.

Sometime later, John sat in the middle of a conversation between Lafayette and Peggy, something having to do with trampolines and space. Neither of his friends were entirely sober, which made the conversation even funnier, but thankfully, Peggy had toned down the drinking since her birthday. Probably because of Angelica; her lectures were scary.

John let his mind winder. He remembered their sophomore year, when Alex had dragged him out and tried to get them admitted to a strip club, mostly as a joke, even though they were under twenty-one. It had been fair, all things considered; John had forced Alex out for this birthday nine months before.

_“Okay, so, since you neglected to tell me about your birthday last year, we have to do something this year.”_

_John glanced over the top of his textbook. Alex was staring up at him, upside down and grinning. He had spread himself out across the couch, mostly on top of John, who had been attempting to study before being rudely interrupted when his best friend collapsed on top of his legs._

_John turned his gaze back to his textbook. “I didn’t neglect anything,” he said, flipping a page and skimming the diagram at the top. “We barely knew each other at this time last year. And while we’re on the topic, let me remind you that you also forgot to tell me about your birthday until the day of.”_

_Alex shrugged, as much as he could while lying flat on his back. “You never asked.”_

_John snorted. “Well, you never asked about my birthday, either, so I guess we’re even.”_

_“Well, that’s not relevant anymore.” Alex shoved himself up into a sitting position, using John’s thighs as leverage. “What do you want to do?”_

_John pulled his legs up, resting his textbook against his knees. “I dunno. You choose something.”_

_“But that’s no fun,” Alex whined. “What if you don’t like it?”_

_“I’m sure I’ll love anything you choose.”_

_“Strippers?”_

_John managed to catch his book before it fell to the floor. “Alex, what the hell?” He looked up; Alex was smirking at him, one eyebrow quirked slightly higher than the other. “God, I thought you were serious.”_

_“And who says I’m not?”_

_John shook his head. “Neither of us has that kind of money,” he said plainly. “And besides, you know I’m gay.”_

_“And who says the strippers have to be girls? You know, that’s kinda sexist against—”_

_“All right!” John pressed himself against the back of the couch, letting his head hit the wall as Alex cackled beside him. “I get it. But still no strippers.”_

A dull buzzing against his leg snapped him back into the present, back into his paranoid mindset. He stood up quickly, shoving his hand in his pocket and ignoring the confused looks from his friends. He pulled out his phone; the number was one he didn’t recognize, and he answered it unthinkingly, holding a finger up to his friends as he crossed the hardwood floor and walked toward his bedroom.

“Hello?”

_“Happy birthday, big brother!”_

John paused, his fingers clutching the smooth metal handle of his bedroom door. “Martha?”

His sister laughed. _“Yeah! I just got a new phone, but I forgot to text you.”_ A pause. _“So what’s up? Did I interrupt something? You don’t sound too excited to hear from me.”_

John shook his head, even though Martha couldn’t see him. “No, I am, I was just…” He turned slightly, leaning against the wall beside his door, and glanced across the hall to Alex’s dark, empty room. “I was expecting it to be someone else.” He turned back toward his room, wrapping his hand around the uneven wood of the doorframe as he stepped inside. “That’s all.”

_“Ah, okay. Well, how are you? What are you doing today?”_

John crossed his room, sinking down onto his mattress and spreading his free hand absently over the top stitching on his quilt. “Nothing much. Angelica and Laf planned a party, so everyone’s over here right now.”

_“Shit, did I interrupt? I’m sorry.”_

“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” John glanced up, his gaze landing on his open door. “I needed a break from it all anyway.”

_“I won’t feel too bad then. Anything interesting happen lately?”_

Interesting? That wasn’t the word John would use to describe anything that had happened lately, but it was something. He tried to find some acceptable answer, but his sister was already talking again.

_“Oh! And while I’m talking to you, dad said to invite you for Christmas.”_

John stilled. “Martha, I don’t know if—”

 _“No, you don’t get to say that. You haven’t been home in what, two years?”_ Some shuffling, a muffled thump as Martha probably closed a door. _“We miss you, Jack. How come you never come to visit? How come you never call?”_

John sighed, running his hand across his face. “I… I’ve just been busy, Martha. Med school is hard, and I…” How did he bring up the fact that his best friend was missing? How did he say that the reason he wanted to stay in New York was because he didn’t want to leave and risk missing Alex?

_ “See, you don’t even have a reason.”  _ Martha’s offended tone tore him from his thoughts.  _ “It’s just for a few days, Jack. Maybe a week at most. You won’t fail college just because you come home for a week.” _

“I…” John really didn’t have an excuse not to go unless he wanted to tell his sister about the months he had spent worrying over Alex. “All right. I’ll come.”

_“I’ll hold you to that.”_

John smiled. “I promise.”

At that moment, Angelica appeared in his doorway, and John took his phone away from his ear. “Hang on Martha.”

“We’re going to cut the cake if you’re ready,” she said. “We’ll be in the kitchen.”

She turned and made her way back down the hall, and John put the phone back to his ear. “Angelica says it’s time for cake, so I’m going to go.”

_“All right, well, I’ll let you get back to your party. I love you.”_

John smiled. “I love you too. I’ll see you in two months.”

He clicked the end call button and sighed, remaining still for a few moments in the silence of his room. He could hear his friends laughing in the kitchen, but he wasn’t ready to join them just yet.

He would be joining his family in two months for Christmas. He wasn’t going to be in New York for at least a week; what if Alex came back and John wasn’t there? What would happen then?

His eyes focused blankly on his phone screen, only vaguely noticing when it faded to black, and then he shook himself out of his daze. His friends were waiting, and Angelica would no doubt come back to see what was taking him so long. If she found him staring at his phone, she’d know exactly what he was thinking, but she wouldn’t understand. So John stood and shoved his phone into his pocket, crossing his room and walking out into the hallway, ignoring the empty blackness that was Alex’s room.

John entered the kitchen to a very off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday,” his friends gathered in a semicircle around the kitchen table with their faces lit by softly glowing birthday candles, and he pasted a smile onto his own face as he stood across from them.

If most of John’s smiles that night, save for a few distracted ones, were forced, no one noticed. If he kept checking his phone every time the attention moved to someone else, if he kept watching the door and waiting for it to open, if he wasn’t as happy as he led his friends to believe, well, that wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.

And if his wish, when he blew out the colorful wax candles on the cake, wasn’t for himself, but for Alex, no one needed to know.

Besides, wishes were secret anyway.

A while later, once all the confetti had been swept up from the floor and numerous paper plates had been tossed in the trash, once John’s friends had left, he rested his elbows on the counter and pulled out his phone again.

Nothing. The screen was black.

John stared at his phone for a second, as if a message would come through in that very moment, and then turned it on to scroll through his recent contacts. He clicked call.

Once.

_The number you have called is not available at this time. If you wish to leave a message, wait for the tone._

“Hey, Alex. I don’t know if you’ll get this, because you haven’t answered anything else, but can you just… call me back or something?” John sighed, shifting his elbows against the counter and pushing his hair from his face as he stared across the kitchen. “It… today’s my birthday, and I wanted to hear your voice.”

Twice.

_The number you have called is not available at this time. If you wish to leave a message, wait for the tone._

He hung up.

Thrice.

_The number you have called is not available at—_

The mechanical voice faded as John pulled the phone away from his ear. He stared at the blank screen, watched it fade to black, and his fingers released their grip on the smooth black case, letting it fall to the counter with a dull thud as he dropped his head into his hands.

And when he couldn’t stop the tears from coming, he let them fall.

John knew his head would hurt in the morning, both from the tears and the resulting sinus congestion, but he didn’t care. He knew that crying wouldn’t change anything, and he knew that dwelling over everything would just make it hurt more, but none of that mattered right now. What mattered was that it was his birthday and he was alone.

And sure, maybe it was selfish, but he needed Alex. He needed someone who kept him busy and out of his intrusive, dark thoughts. He needed someone who understood him, someone who knew what to say and when to say it. He needed his best friend there by his side because he didn’t know what to do.

He didn’t know what to do when Alex was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another two weeks probably! Thank you for all your comments and kudos. I love coming back and seeing what you all think of my work.
> 
> Also, the places I mention in here are real. The bodega-turned-bar off Columbus and 88th? It exists (and it's important later). Like the tags say, I did _a lot_ of research on New York for this.
> 
> Lastly, I hope I’m showing the denying, confused, empty, kind of depressed energy the way I want it to feel. I need it to feel slow and stagnant at the beginning because that’s exactly what John is feeling. The days pass, sure, but they pass by quickly and slowly all at the same time. It’s repetitive because that’s what John is living. Every day is the same, every day that Alex isn’t there and every day that Alex doesn’t answer his calls and texts is just another day of the same waiting game.


	5. Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been so long. I was pretty busy this summer, and admittedly, I was lazy. And stuck on this chapter, because it's kind of filler? But I didn't want to get rid of it, and I wanted it to be perfect.
> 
> Credit to my wonderful friend and beta reader for the topic of Alex's essay. <3

_Six Months_

The apartment was crowded with his friends, and for whatever reason, everyone had decided to migrate into the kitchen. It was impossible to take two steps in any direction without running into someone, and John really didn’t want someone to spill steaming food on him or shatter a glass on the tile floor. He had managed to zone out after a while, tired of tensing up every time Peggy tried to carry more than three dishes at a time, and had pressed himself into the corner near the counter.

Monday, November 20  
**To Alex**  
**2:34 pm**  
You can’t just miss friendsgiving, Alex  
Eliza will be mad

“John, where do you keep your plates?”

John turned away from the counter, hurriedly shoving his phone in his back pocket as he turned to face Herc. “Um… in that cabinet where your hand is—no, your left hand.”

Herc nodded his thanks, turning back to the cabinet, and John slid carefully along the counter, exhaling when he crossed into the living room.

During freshman year, Angelica had forced them all to have a clear day in their schedules before everyone split up for fall break, and they had taken over the kitchen in the dorms to have a mini Thanksgiving. It had turned into a yearly tradition now, where Herc and Eliza usually ended up cooking. Peggy would try to help, but that inevitably ended with something being burnt. Alex would outright refuse to let any of them make macaroni and cheese. Apparently, it was something Jefferson talked about regularly, and Alex wanted zero association with it. Angelica thought it was stupid, but John found it hilarious.

His friends had insisted on continuing the tradition this year, even with Alex being gone. John figured they wanted to keep something normal since he had basically rejected everything else they’d tried to do for six months. And he had to admit that it was nice, having everyone together with the smell of Herc and Eliza’s wonderful cooking floating through the apartment.

John pulled his phone from his pocket once he was out of the kitchen. No new notifications.

He sighed and shoved it back into his pocket, determinedly ignoring the pressing weight of it against his leg even as his fingers twitched to pull it out again. He grabbed his anatomy textbook off the table and opened to a random page, staring unseeingly at the paragraphs and diagrams until Peggy came bouncing out of the kitchen to call him to the table.

Once enough chairs had been dragged from other rooms and crammed around the overflowing table, Eliza stood up from her seat.

“I know you’re all ready to eat Herc’s delicious food,” she began, “but first, I’d like to go around and have everyone say something they’re thankful for.”

Angelica volunteered to start, and John wracked his brain for something to say. What was he supposed to be thankful for? Everything that popped into his mind seemed mediocre and cliché, not meaningful enough for this. Alex was gone. He wasn’t getting any responses to the messages and calls he sent every day. He glanced down at the phone in his lap. Still nothing.

After a moment, he realized the room was silent, and looked up. Everyone was staring at him. Eliza motioned for him to talk, flashing an encouraging smile, and he swallowed.

“I… I’m thankful for the detectives,” he whispered. “Knox and Greene.”

His friends’ eyes flickered down to their plates, and the polite silence grew heavier. He thought he saw Laf blink away tears. _Shit._ Why had he said that? He shouldn’t have said that. They were all trying to be cheerful, and here he was ruining the mood again with his stupid depression and constant, obsessive thoughts of Alex. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s fine,” Eliza said. She pulled her napkin off the table and set it across her lap as she sat down. “That’s what you’re thankful for.”

The rest of the table murmured in agreement, and the awkward silence was gone, replaced by laughter and lighthearted conversation. Once he was sure no one was focused on him, John leaned back in his chair and unlocked his phone.

 **To Alex**  
**6:21 pm**  
What are you thankful for tonight Alex?

Peggy nudged his shoulder, and John quickly shoved his phone under his thigh before turning to her with a smile and engaging in whatever non-alcoholic drinking game she managed to rope him into every year.

Two rounds of food later, plus dessert in the form of pies and Eliza’s tiramisu, his friends were crowded around the coat rack in the hallway, shrugging on jackets and checking their bags.

Laf was leaving for France the next morning, Herc was driving back to his mom’s place, and the Schuylers were driving upstate to visit their family. Peggy had been on Skype with the younger ones a few days ago, and they were beyond excited to see their older sisters after almost three months.

For the first time in four years, John would be alone for Thanksgiving. Normally, he and Alex (and sometimes Burr, if John could convince him to agree) would figure out something to do, whether that was a movie marathon or a night out at a restaurant. But John was never alone.

Eliza was the last one to walk out, stalling awkwardly in the doorway as she wrapped her scarf around her neck. She looked up at him, eyebrows knit together and lips parted to form words, but she pressed them together again and threw her arms around John’s neck.

“You’re always welcome to come, you know,” she murmured. Her warm breath tickled his neck, a sharp contrast to the stinging, almost-winter air that always seemed to haunt the apartment no matter how high the heat was, and John sighed, wrapping his arms around her back.

“Yeah, I know.”

And he did know. He knew that his friends cared, and that they were just trying to help him. They were all missing Alex; it wasn’t just him, and he knew it was probably selfish to think otherwise. He was just the worst at coping with it.

He closed the door after she left, listening to her footsteps disappear down the hallway before he walked back into the kitchen.

The apartment was quiet now, but he wasn’t ready to go to sleep just yet. He set water to boil for tea and turned to the rest of the room. Thankfully, his friends hadn’t left much of a mess. He went through the motions of sweeping the floor and clearing empty plates from the table. When the tea kettle whistled, he poured the water carefully into a mug and walked into the living room.

John set his tea on the table and sank onto the couch, glancing around the empty room. His eyes focused on the movements of a spider skittering across the outside of the window, calmly constructing a delicate web over the glass. John hoped it didn’t fall; he wanted to draw the tiny thing, study the body structure and thin threads of silk that somehow stayed stuck to the brickwork around the window despite their fragile nature.

He watched the spider for a while, following its meandering path across the glass as his fingers tapped an offbeat pattern onto the cushion beneath him. His thoughts drifted elsewhere, away from the warmth of the living room.

_John was walking along one of the winding concrete sidewalks on campus, near one of the sciences buildings. The wind blew his hair around his face, and he watched the dead leaves skitter across the sidewalk. He wasn’t wearing a jacket._

_John glanced around. It was too quiet for the middle of the day. There had to be at least a few other students walking around, sitting on the grass studying or something. He blinked, and a figure appeared a few yards in front of him, their hands stuffed in the pockets of their hoodie. The person was staring at him, grinning, and John realized that he was staring at Alex._

_John tried to shout, to yell Alex’s name or something, but he couldn’t speak. Alex stood still on the path, beckoning to John with one hand, and John started running._

_Other students materialized on the empty paths, oblivious to John’s elated panic. He shoved through a sea of people, some walking slowly as they talked to their friends, others texting and focused completely on their phones. He skirted around them, bumping into arms and knocking bags off shoulders, but his eyes never lost sight of Alex._

_He was so close, just a few feet away from throwing himself into Alex’s chest, and then he was stumbling, tripping over nothing and throwing his arms out to break his fall when he landed on the ground. But the the ground was gone, and John wasn’t falling forward anymore. He was staring up at nothing as he tumbled backward into empty air._

John woke with a gasp, shoving himself into a sitting position while his stomach continued to tumble into the dark emptiness of the void. The sky outside was pitch black, offset by scattered lights in other buildings that never seemed to dim. The spider and its web had disappeared, too tiny to be seen in the darkness.

John took a breath, trying to calm his racing heart. It had just been a dream. He wasn’t falling. He hadn’t seen Alex. None of it was real.

He stared at the inky sky outside the window for another second, letting the tiny dots of light go fuzzy before before he tore his gaze away. His tea was still on the table, long gone cold by now. The old lights above the counter in the kitchen buzzed quietly, and John sighed before pushing himself off the couch.

Something thudded against the floor as he stood, and he startled, glancing down. His phone lay face down on the carpet, its black case a sharp contrast against the light carpet. He scooped it up and cradled it in his hand, pressing his index finger against the power button. No new messages. No notifications.

_As usual._

For the first time in a while, his eyes focused on the image he had set as his background. He didn’t really look at his lock screen anymore; just glanced over notifications before shoving the phone in his pocket, but this time he really looked. It was a picture of him and his friends from last summer, one of the days where it had been stupidly hot and Alex had dragged them all outside because he loved that weather. Alex was in the center grinning wildly, his arms thrown around John and Peggy, who looked considerably less enthused by the intense heat but happy nonetheless.

The screen faded to black, and John bit his lip, turning away from the living room.

The apartment had always been a bit unsettling at night. The building itself was old, constantly settling and creaking at the oddest times. The hallway lights were old and yellowed, and the elevators only seemed to work half the time. But he could always count on the tiny streams of light coming from under Alex’s door at any hour. Sometimes the entire hallway by their bedrooms would be brightly lit because Alex had forgotten to close his door.

Now it was just dark.

He walked into his own room, crossed to his desk, and shuffled through the stack of papers that covered the surface—some half-finished organic chemistry notes, a few old assignments he’d been reviewing, a couple of pencil sketches he’d forgotten to ink. He picked up the card that Detective Knox had given to him six months ago, and stared at the blue numbers across the bottom.

He needed to know. The detectives hadn’t called him, but maybe they’d been busy. Maybe they’d forgotten to call. John needed _something,_ and he hoped, as he slowly typed in the numbers from the card, that they’d just overlooked the file.

The dial tone trilled through the speaker, and John realized with a flash of fear that he didn’t know what he would do if all he heard was the dull recorded voice of an answering machine. He gripped the edge of his desk and prayed for a human voice.

_“New York City Police Department, twenty-fourth precinct, detectives unit. This is Detective Knox speaking.”_

_Thank God._ John took a steadying breath. “Um, hi, it’s John Laurens. I was wondering if you had any updates on Alex’s case? Alexander Hamilton.”

He heard a metal drawer open, and then something shifted; maybe papers. _“We’ve gotten a few calls from people who have seen the posters, but none of them have gone further than odd suspicions and rumors.”_ John heard a few more muffled paper flips. _“Other than that, there hasn’t been anything. I’m sorry.”_

John stared down at his desk. His eyes followed the outline of an autumn maple tree scribbled on one of the papers scattered across his desk. “Oh.”

 _“Keep your head up, kid.”_ The detective’s voice was quieter now; gentler. _“We haven’t found anything yet, but have some hope, all right?”_

“Okay,” John whispered. “Thanks anyway.”

He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed the end call button. He dropped it on his desk amongst the scattered papers, set his palms flat on the surface, and tried to focus on his breathing.

And then he was sinking to the floor, a few papers falling with him as his fingertips caught on their corners. The leg of his desk cut into his hip, his fingers clutched tightly at the threads of the carpet, and he tried desperately to wipe the tears from his face as he sobbed.

He was alone again, as always, without his friends and without Alex, and he didn’t know if Alex was even alive.

 _No._ He gasped a heavy, shuddering breath, and shook his head. He wasn’t going to think about that. He couldn’t think about that. If Alex was dead, he didn’t know what he would do.

He would fall, but he wouldn’t get back up. He wouldn’t be able to.

* * *

The apartment was noisy again, full of life and energy, but something was still missing. The rest of his friends had returned that morning, insistent on visiting before classes started the next day. John had told them it wasn’t necessary, but according to Peggy, he was lonely and boring and needed something to spice up his life.

He was currently leaning against the counter in the kitchen, phone in his hands as he faced the living room and absently listened to the conversations his friends were having. He was pretty sure Peggy was ignoring Herc and Angelica’s debate over gummy bears; he could hear the cheerful music and the sound of popping bubbles from whatever game she was playing on her phone.

He tuned out after a while, unlocked his phone, and scrolled up through his messages to Alex, reading over each one.

Tuesday, November 21  
**To Alex**  
**10:27 am**  
I had a dream about you last night  
I was so close Alex  
But then I woke up  
The detectives said they haven’t found anything

 **To Alex**  
**11:00 am**  
Everyone else is gone now too  
It’s really empty  
Remember when we would hang out in the dorms and cook stuff and annoy Burr?  
I miss that

Wednesday, November 22  
**To Alex**  
**12:01 am**  
I can’t sleep

Thursday, November 23  
**To Alex**  
**10:54 am**  
I keep thinking I’ll wake up and you’ll have sent me some essay in the middle of the night  
Like the one you did on Hamlet at 3am that one time  
It was actually really good

Friday, November 24  
**To Alex**  
**2:27 am**  
I don’t care if it’s not an essay analyzing how Shakespeare damages the female identity through stereotypes and his treatment of female characters in Hamlet  
Just send me something  
Please Alex  
Anything  
I’m falling back to where I was before and I can feel it  
Distract me

Saturday, November 25  
**To Alex**  
**9:32 pm**  
Everyone comes back tomorrow  
It’ll be kind of normal again  
Can you come back tomorrow too?

Sunday, November 26  
**To Alex**  
**4:42 pm**  
I keep waiting for you to walk in that door  
Everyone else is here already

His fingers hovered over they keyboard, ready to type something else when someone gently pulled the phone out of his grasp, the texts disappearing along with the screen. His his gaze snapped up from his empty hands. Eliza stood on the other side of the counter, John’s phone in her hands. Her eyebrows were knit together, and a frown marred her soft features.

“Come join us,” she said. “We’ve been trying to talk to you for the past few minutes.”

Had they? Oops.

Her lips quirked up into a gentle smile, and she turned to walk back to the living room, glancing down at John’s phone as she walked. The screen was still on his messages to Alex.

John walked around the counter. “I’m listening. Now…” He held out his hand. “Can I have that back?”

Eliza had paused in the living room, frozen at the edge of the rug as she stared at his phone. Her frown had shifted into something softer, and John could see that her brown eyes had widened. The blue text boxes faded to black as his phone locked, but Eliza’s gaze stayed on the dark screen.

“You… you’ve been texting Alex,” she whispered, glancing up. “John—”

The rest of the group looked up at him; Herc didn’t look surprised. Peggy hadn’t been paying attention. Aaron seemed disinterested, as always. Laf looked close to tears.

John clenched his jaw. “It doesn’t matter. Just... give me my phone.”

Angelica pursed her lips. “John, it’s been six months. Maybe you should talk to someone.”

“A therapist,” Eliza cut in, sinking down on the couch beside Angelica, John’s phone cupped delicately in her hands. “Or at least one of the counselors at school. Talking about it will help.”

He knew his friends were just trying to help; had he been in a better mindset, he probably would have accepted their suggestions, but right now, his focus was on his phone. His phone was his only connection to Alex, the only way he would know if his friend was okay. He needed it.

John shook his head. “Guys, really, I’m fine.” He took another step toward the group. “But I need my phone back. Please”

Angelica looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. “So you can text Alex again?”

“Yes. No. I don’t…” John ran both hands through his hair, staring at the floor. “I don’t see why this matters.”

“It matters because we’re worried about you, John.” Eliza’s gaze gaze stayed fixed on him even as her fingers traced the worn corners of the phone case. “How long have you been texting him?”

John didn’t answer, and Eliza bit her lip, letting her gaze flicker down to the phone in her hands. “John, you can’t not talk about it. Something’s wrong.”

Herc leaned forward. “I know you miss Alex,” he said quietly, and John’s heart twisted. “We all do. But you can’t go on like this forever.”

Laf nodded. “It will destroy you, mon ami.”

His friends kept talking, voices gentle and sugary sweet as they suggested things that could help him, giving him option after option, but John had zoned out. Everything was too much; the voices, the words, the thoughts, the implications, and he needed his phone—

“I’m not a child!

His friends fell silent. Peggy, who still hadn’t caught on to the conversation happening two feet away from her, jumped and nearly fell off the arm of the couch.

John stepped forward and snatched his phone from Eliza’s hand, slamming his fingers against the edge of the table in the process. “Just shut up, all right? I don’t want to go.” He ignored the flash of pain that ran through his hand. “I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

He turned and stalked down the hallway, noting the silence he left in his wake but not caring either way.

He paused in front of Alex’s room, staring at the dark, motionless tableau for a moment before turning abruptly on his heel and walking into his own room. He didn’t bother closing the door; he was sure none of his friends would try to bother him after his outburst.

“I don’t need to talk to anyone,” he mumbled at the window as he collapsed onto his bed. He didn’t need to be coddled just because he didn’t handle his emotions as quickly or as well as his friends did.

It didn’t seem like any of them were as worried as he was. They didn’t constantly wait for messages and calls, didn’t text a number that they knew wouldn’t answer, didn’t spend their nights lying awake, waiting for something but not really knowing what. Sometimes it seemed like they didn’t care, like nothing had changed since Alex had disappeared. The calm, rational part of him knew that it wasn’t true, but the emotional, upset part let the thought consume his mind.

After a while, he heard the whispers resume from down the hall. He caught a few of the hushed words—depressed, worried, Alex’s name, and his own. He sighed. He didn’t care that they were talking about him. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like it made a difference, anyway. They could talk all they wanted, but they couldn’t make him do something he didn’t want to do.

Alex could have done something, he mused. How ironic. The one person John needed was the only one who couldn’t be there. Alex was always the one who had noticed the little things, the one who had talked to John about them, the one who John had actually felt comfortable confiding in.

He was the only one who had known the extent of John’s depression.

John passed his phone back and forth in his hands as he stared at the ceiling. Left, right, left, right, left; it slipped between his fingers and tumbled onto his chest. The pain that sparked beneath his ribs was appropriate, he supposed. It just added a little more to what was already there.

John knew that he was falling. He was falling hard and fast toward whatever lay below, showing no signs of slowing down, and there was no one there who could catch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's stuck with this for the past five months with no updates. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!


	6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry.
> 
> I know it's been five months. I got stuck on this chapter because it was kind of filler when I started? The college application process picked up around then as well, plus I was in my school's musical.
> 
> But we're back. I've mostly finished college stuff, and I'm on spring break now, so I have a bit more time.

_Seven Months_

John crossed another tiny side street, squishing the gray slush beneath his boots as he stared down the street, eyes flitting between the sidewalk and the spaces beside parked cars. His breath formed tiny clouds in the frigid winter air, floating upward for a moment before disappearing just as quickly.

The main purpose of his walk was to admire the plethora of Christmas lights wrapped around railings and strung across balconies, but John would be lying if he said he didn’t look down every single street he crossed in the hopes of somehow finding Alex.

He hadn’t asked any of his friends to go with him. Ever since Thanksgiving, when Eliza had taken his phone, he’d gotten too many pitying looks from everyone, too many thinly veiled suggestions that he try to move on.

John turned another corner at random, slowing down to glance along both sides of the street before focusing on the glittering lights strung up along balconies and wrapped around the skeletons of leafless trees lining the snow-covered sidewalks.

He didn’t want to move on.

The colorful lights blinked slowly, growing steadily brighter as the sun dipped behind the buildings. John wandered around for a while longer, staring at the varying colors until they blurred into soft blobs, sending a nod and a polite smile toward the suited businessmen walking down the deserted sidewalks as he made his way home.

He ignored the way his heart jumped every time someone walked toward him out of the darkness.

John pulled at the sleeves of his sweater, folding them down over his hands. It was actually Alex’s sweater; John had nicked it from his room months ago and never given it back, but Alex hadn’t seemed to notice. John had worn it around the apartment all the time, and Alex hadn’t once asked for it back.

The sweater definitely wasn’t warm enough to be worn alone in the chilly December weather, but John needed to feel the cold that day. He wasn’t looking to get frostbite, he just needed to feel something other than the emptiness, and the biting wind distracted him from his thoughts.

The apartment was warm when he walked in the door, infinitely better than the freezing wind outside. But it was empty, too empty, and John didn’t even bother turning on the lights before he crossed to the window and climbed out onto the fire escape.

He’d managed to find their Christmas lights, the green and white ones Alex had always managed to get tangled up, and strung them across the rail of the fire escape. He had to thread the cord into the living room to plug them in, but the constant draft was well worth the glowing lights.

John leaned on the rusty rail, staring out across the city that never seemed to sleep. He watched the headlights of far-off cars and the fluorescent lights from twenty-four hour convenience stores and sporadic sparkling of Christmas lights, and he wondered if, somewhere, Alex could see the lights too.

He pulled his phone from the pocket of the hoodie, ignoring the lingering stiffness in his fingers as he typed in his passcode.

Saturday, December 15  
**To Alex**  
**6:54 pm**  
The lights are pretty Alex  
I wish you could see them

John shoved his phone back in his pocket and dropped his head onto his arms, letting everything blur together until it became one big blob of colorful lights.

* * *

Three days later, John was standing in the airport at six in the morning with two suitcases and one boarding pass for a flight to South Carolina.

John didn’t want to leave. If he had his way, he would be staying in New York for Christmas, not traveling over seven hundred miles from where Alex probably was.

Because what if Alex came back? What if he returned to their apartment and John wasn’t there? What if the detectives found a lead? What if they found a body?

_No._

John stood up when the boarding attendant called for his group number, presented his boarding pass and smiled politely at the captain before stepping onto the plane.

_Breathe._

Monday, December 18  
**To Alex**  
**7:28 am**  
I’m going to South Carolina for a bit  
Martha coerced me into coming for Christmas  
If you come back and I’m gone, that’s why  
Just… text me okay?

“Excuse me, sir.”

John glanced up from where he had been staring at the blinking cursor in the empty text box. A flight attendant stood in the aisle beside him, a safety manual clutched in her hand.

“I’m going to have to ask you to turn your phone off, or put it in airplane mode,” she said. “We will be taking off shortly.”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” John said. “Thank you.”

The flight attendant walked back toward the front of the plane, and John stared at the unanswered messages and the mocking cursor for another second before he pressed his thumb against the power button.

He wouldn’t get any reception when he was in the air, anyway. And after every single one of the other messages he had sent hadn’t been answered, he didn’t have much hope that the most recent ones would get a quick response, if they got one at all.

And besides, he needed to edit his paper. He’d written it to get something done, but he hadn’t been anywhere near focused enough for the paragraphs to be coherent. None of the ideas flowed right, and it sounded like he had chosen all the words from an eighth grade vocabulary list.

If Alex had been here, he would have offered to edit John’s paper already. And then he would have completely torn it apart and restructured everything to make it sound ten times better than it had when John had started.

Alex’s papers always sounded near-perfect with just the first draft.

_“Here.”_

_That was all the warning John got before a stack of papers was shoved in his face, sharp corners cutting into his mouth. He sputtered and pushed it away enough to actually read the tiny text on the page. “What’s this?”_

_“My essay,” Alex said, pressing it into John’s hand. “Read it.”_

_John glanced at the date in the top corner. “Alex, this isn’t even due until February.”_

_“So?”_

_John sighed and skimmed the title page. Something about Shakespeare’s lasting influence on the English language. “Has it even been assigned yet?”_

_“Technically, no,” Alex said, settling onto John’s neatly made bed. “But I had the assignment details and I wanted to finish a draft before break so I have time to edit it when I think of more ideas.”_

_John reread a sentence about the fluidity of a developing language, glancing up distractedly. “You’re nothing if not prepared.”_

_“Do you think it’s good though?” Alex asked. “Because I think it’s kind of dry, but—”_

_“No, it’s fine,” John cut in, flipping to the next page. “Really. Even if you decide to edit it again, it’s a really interesting paper.”_

_“You’re just saying that because you’re a Shakespeare nerd,” Alex protested, tugging John’s blankets up to his chin. “Therefore, your opinion is biased and invalid.”_

_John shook his head. “If you’re just going to disregard my opinion, why’d you ask me to read it in the first place?”_

_Alex laughed, throwing a pillow at John’s head. “Because you’re a Shakespeare nerd and I knew you’d like it.”_

The floor began to vibrate, and John snapped back to the present, vaguely registering the voice of the flight attendant as he shoved his paper back into his bag. He wasn’t going to get anything done.

It was going to be a long two hours.

* * *

Judging from the sweet smell that hit him as soon as he walked in the door, his sister was baking again. Cookies, probably; Martha had a dozen different recipes that she’d collected over the years, and no one could ever manage to make them as well as she did.

“Anyone home?” he shouted, and was met with several voices shouting his name at once. He had about ten seconds to brace himself before his siblings came barrelling in from the kitchen, shoving each other out of the way to try and get the first hug. It ended with all of them jumping on him at once, grabbing onto whatever part of him the could reach as they squeezed him in tight hugs.

“Did you bring presents?” James asked as soon as John had set him on the floor.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” John said, ruffling his brother’s hair. James grinned and beckoned for John to lean down, and he did, kneeling on the floor. He cupped his hands around John’s ear, his breath tickling John’s skin as he whispered, “If I sneak you one of Martha’s cookies, can I open it early?”

John snorted. “Not a chance, bud,” he laughed, pushing himself up from the floor. “Nice try.”

James groaned, but accepted the defeat, grabbing Henry and pulling him away in the direction of the kitchen.

Martha turned to watch them. “You guys had better not eat any of those cookies.”

James screeched and sprinted down the rest of the hallway, dragging Henry with him. Martha was quick to follow, shouting at Mary to protect the cookies.

John watched them disappear around the corner, grinning at their antics. He’d missed them.

When he turned back to pick up his bags, his father was standing in the doorway leading to the dining room. John hadn’t noticed when he’d come to stand in the hallway.

“Welcome back,” his father said simply. He’d never been the type for overly exuberant greetings. “It’s good to have you home.”

“It’s good to be back,” John said, stepping forward for an awkward half-handshake, half-hug. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed being home.”

“How’s school?” his father asked, stepping back. “You haven’t called much, so I’m assuming you’re busy.”

 _Busy and worried and tired._ “Yeah, the classes are tough, but I’m keeping up,” John said. “Lots of studying.”

His father nodded, and they fell into silence. John’s eyes focused on the artwork hung on the opposite wall, watercolor flowers, crayon drawings, a professional portrait of their family.

He actually looked happy in that one.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and unpack?” his father suggested, breaking the weirdly stilted silence. “I asked your sister to change your sheets.”

“Thank you,” John said. “I’ll come down for dinner in a bit.”

John grabbed both his bags and trudged up the stairs to the second floor, dropping his bags on the carpet as he turned the handle and pushed open the door to his old room.

It was almost exactly as he had left it. It was surprising to think he hadn’t been back in almost two years, but the layer of dust that had settled over most of the flat surfaces begged to differ. John brushed his fingers along the edge of his bookshelf, and they came away covered in soft gray dust. He’d have to clean, but that could wait until later. He’d always hated dusting.

A flash of blue caught his eye, the cracked spine of a book pressed between two others, the bright color not quite obscured by the covering of dust. He pried it from the shelf, waving the dust away from his face as it billowed up in choking clouds.

Elegant writing proclaiming the title _Hamlet_ stared up at him from the cover of the book. He smiled, recalling the seemingly endless paragraphs of messages that greeted him when he opened his texts one morning. They were timestamped from three in the morning, and contained a surprisingly coherent essay about female stereotypes in _Hamlet._ John had read every single one.

He opened it to a random page, carefully pressing back the pages that had come loose from the binding, and read the first line his eyes landed on.

_To be or not to be—that is the question._

This soliloquy had definitely been his favorite when he had read Hamlet. The question of life’s sufferings and suicide had intrigued him, the concept making sense in a way that none of his classmates had understood. He wandered toward his bed, sinking down onto the mattress as he skimmed the rest of Hamlet’s contemplative wonderings.

_To die, to sleep— / To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / May give us pause._

It always came down to fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of running out of time, fear of not having control.

Fear of losing someone.

John’s mind drifted back to the police precinct on that tired morning so many months ago. What was the phrase Detective Greene had used? _Suicidal intentions?_

He flipped toward the end, reading the act and scene references, skimming over character names and nothing else as he searched for the one he wanted.

_Her obsequies have been as far enlarged / As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful._

In John’s opinion, Ophelia’s death was the most heart wrenching one in the play. She had gone mad from her father’s death, passed flowers to her court while singing about their meanings, and then drowned in a river. Gertrude’s beautiful account of her death recounted a tale of an accidental fall into the river, an image of tragic beauty. It was unclear whether she had committed suicide.

John had seen the famous painting depicting her death, the image of a girl holding wildflowers loosely in her hands as she sang, unaware of the danger she was in. Red poppies, he remembered, symbolizing sleep and death. It really was a poetic scene.

John’s eyes skimmed the end of the scene, and his fingers mindlessly flipped through the beginning of Act Five, tracing over line numbers until he reached Ophelia’s burial.

_I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantities of love / Make up my sum._

Hamlet, for all his innuendos and flirting, had loved Ophelia deeply and genuinely. He would have done anything for her, John remembered, reading over the prince’s harsh words toward Laertes. Hamlet seemed similar to himself, actually. John would do anything for Alex, and therefore, he supposed, he would be Hamlet in this case. As much as he had likened Alex to Macbeth, he would consider himself to be Hamlet.

John tore his eyes away from the book and snapped it shut, bending the tiny, colorful tabs he had used to mark Hamlet’s many soliloquies.

Here he was again, comparing his life to Shakespearean tragedies. He fingered the bent corner of the cover, worn from where it had been shoved roughly into his bag one too many times, and stood from his bed, crossing to the shelf and pressing the paperback into its dusty space. He didn’t need to go back to that place again.

John did relate to Hamlet’s situation though. It seemed as if he contemplated life and death a lot as of late, even if it was in relation to Alex.

But then again, everything seemed to be in relation to Alex.

John tugged at his sleeves, folding the excess fabric tighter over his wrists. At least he wasn’t taking orders for revenge from a ghost.

He _never_ wanted to talk to ghosts.

* * *

Christmas morning seemed to come more quickly than usual. John was rudely awoken by his brothers’ elbows pressing into his ribs as they threw themselves across his bed. Martha laughed at him from the doorway, but handed him a cup of coffee when he finally managed to drag himself out from under Henry and James, tugging on a random sweater from the pile draped over the back of his desk chair.

An hour later, scraps of wrapping paper were scattered across the carpet of the living room, and John was half asleep on the couch while his brothers argued over which Disney movie they should watch.

They spent the afternoon lounging around the living room, stealing Martha’s cookies and screaming at each other over a two-hour MarioKart tournament. By the time dinner was ready, a third of Martha’s cookies had disappeared, and John had hurled all the throw pillows on the couch at Mary for ruining his winning streak on Rainbow Road.

Dessert was another third of Martha’s cookies, candy canes taken from between the branches of the Christmas tree, and, after Henry, James, and Mary had gone to bed, eggnog that John was pretty sure Martha had spiked with something.

“So,” John began, setting his empty glass on the coffee table. “How are things with David?”

Martha shrugged. “Better, I guess?” She tugged at her hair, something she’d always done when she was unsure of something. “I mean, we’ve stopped arguing mostly, but I don’t know if…”

His sister’s boyfriend had been somewhat of a touchy subject the last time John had seen her. Martha had called him one night, tearful even before John had picked up. It was clear she’d been holding something in for a while, and John had spent the better part of an hour talking her through the situation.

_“It’ll be okay, Martha,” he murmured. “Call me if you need anything, all right? I love you.”_

_John dropped his phone onto the bed after Martha had whispered a tearful goodbye, collapsing backward into the mattress with a sigh._

_Alex had come back to the dorm about halfway through the conversation, opened his laptop, and promptly started tying something that John guessed wouldn’t be due for another two months, and that was assuming it was even for a class. He hadn’t seemed to be listening to John’s conversation, but as soon as John was off the phone, the incessant typing paused._

_“What was that about?” Alex asked, glancing over. “You look upset.”_

_John stared at his sister’s contact photo, one of the many obnoxious selfies she had filled his gallery with when he’d mistakenly left his phone unattended._

_“It’s not anything about me,” he muttered. “My sister thinks her boyfriend is cheating on her. He’s been staying out late, they’ve been fighting over stupid stuff, that kind of thing.”_

_“Oh.” Alex’s tying stopped for a moment, and then resumed just as quickly. “Can’t she just ask him?”_

_John sighed. “Not everyone is as blunt as you, Alex.” He tossed his phone onto his desk. “She doesn’t want to ruin it if she’s just reading into things.”_

_“Makes sense.”_

_John closed his eyes and let himself drift off to the gentle clicking of Alex’s typing._

_“You love your siblings a lot, don’t you?” Alex said suddenly. “You care about them.”_

_John opened his eyes and glanced over at his desk, where a picture of his siblings sat on the corner, taken during their last trip during the summer before he’d gone off to college._

_“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, I do.”_

“Jack?”

John’s gaze snapped back into focus, dragging him from the cramped dorm room back to the warmth of his dimly lit living room.

Martha reached across the table to grab his hand. “You zoned out,” she said, concern shining in her bright eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Just thinking about someone,” he muttered, swallowing back the lump in his throat, and fuck, he didn’t need to cry in front of his sister. “It’s… I don’t want to bother you with something that’s not your problem.”

“That’s bullshit, John, and you know it,” Martha said. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

John inhaled shakily. “Yeah, I know.”

He hadn’t talked about Alex to anyone who didn’t already know what had happened. Which made it easier, in a way, because he never had to explain the full story. The people he’d talked to already knew; his professors, his friends, almost anyone on campus. He could anticipate the pity in their eyes, prepare himself for the overly gentle way they would treat him and the inevitable apologies he would receive.

So no, he didn’t want to have to explain this to his sister. But what did he have to lose?

“My… my friend,” John whispered, barely audible over the crackling fire. “He went missing a while ago, and we, uh… we haven’t heard from him at all.”

Martha’s eyebrows knit together in the center of her forehead. “How long has it been?”

“Seven months and thirteen…” He swallowed. “Thirteen days.”

Because _of course_ he was counting. How could he not notice every day that went by without a text, every day that went by without a random essay being shoved in his face, every day without Alex?

“Oh my god, John.”

Martha scrambled up from the floor, moving around the table to sit on the couch beside John.

“It’s fine,” he muttered, pressing the sleeves of his sweater against his eyes. Alex’s sweater. “I’ll… I’ll get over it, it’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were dealing with enough shit already,” John muttered, leaning into her embrace. “And I didn’t really feel like talking about it.”

Martha glanced up at him. “If you want to though, you know—”

“Yeah, I…” John pulled away, reaching out to run his fingers along the rim of his empty glass. “I will.”

Martha squeezed his hand one last time, pushing herself up from the couch. “Get some sleep, okay?”

“Yeah,” John muttered. “I will.”

Martha’s footsteps retreated up the stairs, and John was left staring at the Christmas tree beside the window.

It was covered in a haphazard collection of ornaments. There were paper cutouts that he’d created when he was ten, colored in with cheap crayons and markers. Beautiful blown glass ones hung on the lower branches, passed down from his grandparents, and a few clear glass orbs that seemed to be surrounded by a halo of rainbow colors from the lights blinking in the branches. His favorites were the ones that held pictures of his family, smiling brightly at the camera. None of it matched in the traditional sense, but it worked perfectly all the same. Wonderfully mismatched.

_The tree in the dorm hall was surprisingly well-coordinated, white and blue tinsel glimmering between vanilla lights and a small collection of student-made ornaments from an activity day that the student board had coordinated._

_“I never had a Christmas tree when I was little,” Alex commented, pressing his head into John’s shoulder. “They’re pretty.”_

_“Yeah,” John murmured, shifting so Alex’s chin wasn’t digging into his collar bone. “It’s nice.”_

_They stared at the tree until the lights blurred into tiny blobs of color, leaning against each other and drifting off only to be shaken awake by the RA sometime after midnight. Alex pulled John up from the couch, and the blinking lights blurred into soft orbs again as John struggled to keep his eyes open._

But then the lights were in sharp focus, and John was back in his living room, staring at the rainbow colors shining from between the spiky branches of the tree standing majestically in the corner.

And Alex wasn’t there.

The colors doubled, tripled, and then flowed back into singular colorful dots of light as John blinked away the tears welling in his eyes.

* * *

New Year’s Eve was a cause for celebration, and of course that meant hosting a party. Martha was a wonderfully gracious host, which made John feel slightly guilty for hiding in the library for the first half the night and lurking in corners for the other half, but huge events like this had never been his scene.

He’d spent the majority of the evening curled up in a chair in the back corner of the library, rereading _Hamlet_ and texting Alex.

Sunday, December 31  
**To Alex**  
**8:47 pm**  
You know those huge New Year’s parties I told you about?  
We’re hosting another one  
I’m just going to stay in the library  
Look at me, turning into you

 **To Alex**  
**9:32 pm**  
I’m surprised Martha hasn’t found me yet  
She and David are doing better now

 **To Alex**  
**10:13 pm**  
Hamlet made it back to Denmark on a pirate ship, Alex  
He went to all that trouble  
You could come back so much more easily than that

John had finally dragged himself from the library after finishing the play, snuck downstairs, and holed himself up in a corner of the dining room. He recognized about half the people in the room, mostly extended family that he rarely saw and coworkers of his father’s. None of them were people he really wanted to talk to.

Martha squeezed his shoulder as she brushed by him, pressing a glass of champagne into his hand. John stared at the glittering bubbles, watching them rise in tiny streams and fizz together against the edge of the glass before they popped and disappeared into the golden liquid.

He took a sip as he wandered away from the warmth of the party, glancing around to make sure no one would notice his absence before he slipped out the doors to the balcony.

John pulled his phone out of his pocket, ignoring the glaring lack of notifications on the lock screen.

 **To Alex**  
**11:58 pm**  
It’s almost midnight, Alex  
Remember freshman year, when we watched the ball drop?

He could hear the crowd of people inside reaching the end of the countdown, more voices joining in as the number jumped lower and lower.

_Ten._

John turned around to stare at the illuminated party through the glass doors, watching the fancily dressed guests scramble around, more than slightly tipsy, to find someone to be with at midnight, to have someone to kiss.

_Nine._

He turned back to the balcony and downed the last sip of champagne before setting the glass down on the table. Hopefully he’d remember to bring it in when he went inside.

_Eight._

John glanced at his phone, habit at this point; he didn’t need to check the time. The screen was still dark, but why did he expect anything different?

_Seven._

He leaned forward to rest his elbows on the balcony, letting the cold seep through his suit jacket as his phone screen reflected the glow from the lights strung above the doorway behind him.

_Six._

It didn’t snow in South Carolina. The Christmas lights were pretty, but they never seemed as bright when there wasn’t a backdrop of crisp, perfect snow.

_Five._

It was surprising that Martha hadn’t tried to drag him inside to be with everyone instead of being alone, especially after he’d told her about Alex. She didn’t know much, but she had always been able to read him better than anyone. She probably knew how badly he had taken Alex’s disappearance.

_Four._

He wished he could be with Alex at midnight, drunk off cheap alcohol and the excitement around them, counting down the seconds until the new year.

_Three._

Could he make a wish? That was something people did at New Year’s, right?

_Two._

“I wish…” His words disappeared into the darkness. “I wish that Alex is okay.”

_One._

Raucous cheering erupted from inside, elated voices intermingled with off-key plastic party horns and paper streamer poppers to create an joyous din that contrasted harshly to the silence in John’s head.

“Happy New Year, Alex,” he whispered into the darkness. "Wherever you are."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats on Hamlet! (I really like Shakespeare, if you hadn't noticed).
> 
> If you search up “Ophelia’s death”, are paintings that depict the scene, both different but equally beautiful (I referenced the one by Sir John Everett Millais).


	7. Twenty Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the earliest I've updated in forever, but I have this chapter and the next one done, and I'm making up for the five months where I literally disappeared off the dace of the earth so enjoy!

_Eight Months._

John spent the first half of January in South Carolina. Normally, he would have gone back to school early and spent the end of break with Alex. Normally, he wouldn’t have left New York in the first place. Normally, he would have planned something for Alex’s birthday. Something small for the two of them, like they’d done freshman year, and then a larger celebration once all their friends had returned after break.

Freshman year had been a complete accident. John hadn’t known about Alex’s birthday until the day of. How he had gone through half the year without knowing his roommate’s birthday, John had no idea. It wasn’t like Alex was extremely secretive. He’d just never mentioned his birthday.

_“Want to play twenty questions?” John asked, looking over at Alex._

_Alexander was sprawled out across his bed, various books open around him while he typed something on his computer. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion when John spoke but his fingers didn’t slow on his keyboard. “Why twenty questions?”_

_John shrugged, even though Alex couldn’t see him. “I dunno. I’m bored, and I thought we could get to know each other a bit. We’re roommates, it’s five months into the school year, I barely talk to you outside of our friend group, and I don’t know much about you other than that you live off coffee and argue with Jefferson on a daily basis.”_

_This time, Alex turned to face him. “Okay, first of all,” he said, stabbing his pen in John’s direction. “Coffee is a gift from the gods. And secondly, I argue with other people besides Jefferson, but arguing with him is especially entertaining.”_

_“More entertaining than twenty questions?” John smirked. “Come on, just one game.”_

_Alex sighed, closing his laptop and shoving his pen into his hair. “Fine. Do your worst, John Laurens.”_

_After thirty minutes, John had somehow ended up lying on his back on the floor with Alex staring down at him from his bed._

_“Okay, okay,” John laughed, craning his neck to look up at Alex. “What number is this?”_

_“Fifteen, I think,” Alex said. “Or fourteen maybe.”_

_“Okay, um…” John tapped his fingers against the carpet. “When’s your birthday?”_

_Alex smirked. “Ooh, getting personal now, are we?”_

_John reached up to smack his arm. “Oh, like asking about my sexual experiences wasn’t personal.”_

_Alex grinned down at him. “To be fair, you had just asked about my most recent relationship, so I was only repaying the favor.”_

_“That’s beside the point,” John said, waving his hands in Alex’s general direction. “Answer my question.”_

_“Fine, fine.” Alex leaned back against the wall. “It’s today.”_

_John blinked, flipping over to lean on his forearms. “What?”_

_“My birthday,” Alex said. “You asked—”_

_“No, I know,” John shook his head. “But why didn’t you say something before?”_

_Alex shrugged. “I’ve never had to,” he said, as if it was that simple. “I’ve never had any friends to celebrate with.”_

_John tried not to think too much about the nonchalance that colored Alex’s words as he pushed himself up off the floor and held his hands out to Alex._

_“Let’s go out,” he said, grinning. “Let’s do something.”_

_“John, no,” Alex sighed. “Can’t we stay here? I want to finish this essay and argue with Jefferson some more.”_

_“Nope.” John stood up. “You can do that later. We’re gonna do something fun.”_

_“John, please, I really don’t need a huge celebration,” Alex insisted. “I haven’t done anything big in the past few years. Or ever, actually. But really, it doesn’t matter.”_

_“Come on, Alex.” John held out a hand. “Nothing huge. Just you and me.”_

_Alex pulled a notebook toward him, scribbling even as he talked. "Fine, okay, just give me one minute.”_

_John fixed his gaze on the clock on the wall. Sixty seconds later, he stepped toward Alex and snatched his pen. "Time's up. Let's go.”_

_He threw Alex’s coat at his face, drowning out Alex’s demands that John give him back his pen, and walked out of the dorm, grinning when he heard Alex’s hurried footsteps following._

_John didn’t remember exactly where they went that afternoon. At some point, they’d seen a few street performers in Central Park, watched the sunset from Riverside Park, and stumbled across a tiny bodega with a cheerful blue and yellow sign where they’d bought cheap chocolate cupcakes with too-sweet frosting that made their fingers sticky as they walked back to the dorms._

_“You know, I just realized,” Alex said, his breath fogging in the air in front of him, “that we never finished our game.”_

_John turned, raising an eyebrow. “And is that a bad thing?”_

_“Nah.” Alex grinned back at him. “This was more fun.”_

_“And to think you didn’t even want to go out in the first place,” John smirked, dodging the cupcake wrapper Alex threw at him._

_“Yeah, well, that was before you offered to buy me cupcakes, Laurens,” Alex said. “Cupcakes are always a plus.”_

They’d crashed when they’d gotten back, exhausted from walking around for hours, coming down from the high of celebratory excitement. Alex hadn’t even tried to work on his essay when they’d gotten back; they’d sat on John’s bed and finished the cupcakes, and sometime between licking the icing from their fingers and discussing Shakespeare, they’d fallen asleep.

Alex hadn’t seemed to expect a celebration the following year, but John gave him one anyway. The smile on Alex’s face always filled John with indescribable happiness.

This year, John had spent most of the day wandering aimlessly around the house, texting Alex, holding onto the thought that maybe, since it was his birthday, Alex would answer.

Thursday, January 11  
**To Alex**  
 **9:32 am**  
Happy birthday Alex  
22, you’re so old

**To Alex**  
 **10:07 am**  
I’m sorry I’m not in New York  
I should be celebrating with you

**To Alex**  
 **11:27 am**  
I have your present still  
I bought it months ago  
Come back so I can give it to you

**To Alex**  
 **12:54 pm**  
I almost made a cake just now  
Martha asked me what I was doing

**To Alex**  
 **2:36 pm**  
You can’t just miss your own birthday, Alex

He tried not to be too disappointed when none of them got a reply.

He knew Martha had noticed his constant distraction, noticed the way he froze every time his phone buzzed with a notification. She hadn’t said anything, but he’d caught her glancing at him worriedly more than once when she thought he wasn’t looking.

John tried not to pull his phone out when she was in the room. He didn’t need another lecture like he’d gotten from his friends, didn’t need yet another person telling him what he should and shouldn’t be doing. He didn’t need someone else constantly worrying about him, looking at him like he was a wounded animal, because he was _fine._

Sometime in the afternoon, he had been unceremoniously dragged into a Nerf war with James and Henry after being hit in the face with several foam bullets at once. He had managed to wrestle one of the weapons from Henry’s hands, and tried to construct some sort of fort from the oversized cushions lining the couch. There was no way he was going to lose to his younger brothers.

He was seriously reconsidering his chances of winning after he’d used all his bullets, only hitting his brothers a couple times. Henry and James seemed to have an endless supply of the foam pieces, and he wouldn’t put it past them to have hidden a supply of them somewhere in the house.

Martha wandered into the living room with a book in her hands, staring at the scene in front of her for a moment before James offered her a Nerf gun.

“Martha, help me out,” he gasped dramatically. “I’m dying over here.”

Martha grinned, setting down her book and accepting the gun from James. “Nah,” she said, aiming carefully at John. “It’ll be more fun to beat you instead.”

“No fair!” John shouted, throwing himself behind the couch. He poked his head over the top, only to duck back down a second later, letting a the foam bullets hit the wall behind him. “No way is three against one fair. I don’t even have any bullets.”

“That’s your fault for wasting them,” Martha said, walking around the back of the couch. John scrambled backward, trying to avoid her well-aimed shots as he grabbed stray bullets off the floor.

Something hit the back of his head, and he turned around, craning his neck to look up at Henry and James. Both of them had their Nerf guns aimed at his face.

“Surrender!” Henry shouted. “Or suffer the consequences!”

“Okay, okay, I surrender,” John said, dropping his gun and flopping back on the floor with his hands above his head. “You win.”

His brothers cheered, jumping over the scattered cushions John had tried to use as a shield as they ran out of the room. Martha pulled John up from the floor, grinning as she picked up her book and wandered back toward the kitchen, leaving John to the silence in the living room.

He dropped his Nerf gun on the carpet and gathered up the cushions from the floor, squishing them back onto the couch as best he could. He collapsed on the loveseat, picking up his phone from the coffee table. It buzzed in his palm, showing a tiny envelope notification from half an hour ago, and John scrambled to open his messages.

**From Eliza**  
 **6:27 pm**  
I know you’ve probably been texting him today, John  
Call me if you need to talk, okay?

He stared at the text for a moment, debating between a few possible replies as his fingers hovered hesitantly over the keyboard. He could text her. She would probably be the most understanding, would probably let him talk without interrupting. But he didn’t know what he would say. He couldn’t even sort through his own head right now, so what good would talking to someone else do?

He sighed, exiting the conversation with Eliza without replying, and continued clicking back and forth to his messages with Alex, as if refreshing the conversation would make a delayed reply appear.

John waited until after dinner to call Alex, when he knew for sure that everyone in the house had fallen asleep. He half-hoped he wouldn’t have to listen to the robotic, pre-recorded voicemail message, hoped that he wouldn’t have to voice his thoughts to his empty bedroom.

_The number you have called is not available at this time. If you wish to leave a message, wait for the tone._

Apparently, that was too much to hope.

“Hey, Alex,” he whispered, cradling the phone carefully in his hand. “I know it’s kind of late, but… happy birthday. I… We should be buying cheap cupcakes and playing stupid teenage party games right now, but...”

He swallowed, running a hand through his hair. “I… I stayed in South Carolina because you’re not here, because you wouldn’t be there to celebrate, and I don’t… I can’t go back when you’re not there. I can’t go back to an empty apartment. I can’t go back to classes when everyone is just going to treat me like I’m going to break every second. I can’t go back when our friends are just going to tell me that I need to try to move on.”

John twisted his fingers into the bedsheet, gripping his phone tightly with the other. “I don’t want to move on. Can’t they understand that? I don’t know how they can pretend like nothing’s wrong, like nothing’s changed. It’s stupid.”

“I don’t know if you got any of my texts,” he continued, “but I hope you did.” He sighed, switching the phone to his right hand as he pushed himself off the bed and strode over to the window.

“Why aren’t you answering me, Alex? I just… I miss you so much, Alex. I don’t… I need you back. I need you here. Can you please just… answer my texts? Just once, Alex, that’s all—”

A high-pitched beep sounded in John’s ear, and he winced, listening to the automated voice that came through the speaker.

_Voicemail recorded. You have reached the time limit on this voicemail._

John sighed and pulled the phone away from his face, pressing the button to end the call.

“Happy birthday, Alex,” he whispered to the dark screen. “I miss you.”

* * *

John flew back to New York at the end of the week after promising Martha that he would visit again as soon as he could. He didn’t plan on coming back until at least spring break, and maybe not even then. He had so much work to finish before graduation, and he really didn’t want to leave New York again.

But it wasn’t like he had much time to worry about that right now, anyway. As soon as break ended, classes had them hit the ground running as everyone started cramming for finals. It was stupid that they had finals after break, John decided, after he’d crashed in the library and woken up an hour later with his notes stuck to his face. It wasn’t as bad a high school, where he’d forgotten almost everything he’d learned by the end of the semester, but it was still pretty close.

Burr had chided most of them multiple times because according to him, they should have kept on top of organizing material for studying before the end of the semester. And maybe he was right, but John hadn’t really made that his top priority in the past six months.

So he filled his time with making study guides and working on final projects for a few classes, and tried to ignore the emptiness that lingered in the apartment.

As with everything else, finals seemed different because Alex wasn’t there. There was no Alex to study with in the library until two in the morning, no Alex to pull away from his textbooks when he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, no essays being shoved in John’s face because they needed to be proofread just one more time.

Everything was just as empty as it had been for the past eight months.

* * *

Monday, January 29  
**To Alex**  
 **3:33 pm**  
Alex, you haven’t asked me to proof your essays yet  
Finals are next week  
You’re probably done writing them already

Tuesday, January 30  
**To Alex**  
 **7:27 am**  
I didn’t sleep well last night  
I had a dream about the organic chem final

Wednesday, January 31  
**To Alex**  
 **3:23 am**  
I don’t know why I’m still up  
I didn’t have coffee today  
I should probably finish this study guide though

Thursday, February 1  
**To Alex**  
 **12:29 am**  
God, studying sucks without you  
I’m really not focusing

Friday, February 2  
**To Alex**  
 **11:12 pm**  
Three days until finals  
Can you edit my English paper?  
Please Alex, my grammar sucks without your edits

* * *

The last few days leading up to finals were hectic, to say the least. John barely saw his friends, stayed in his room most of the time, and occasionally went to group study sessions for organic chemistry. And then he threw himself into that, helping his classmates organize their notes in a way that made sense, picking out the main points they needed to know instead of every single detail from the endless chapters and diagrams that filled their textbook.

Most nights found him huddled in the library, notes and textbooks spread out across the table in the back corner, empty paper cups from tea stacked precariously near the edge. He’d even fallen asleep there a few times, and had been woken up by the librarian telling him to go home and rest.

* * *

**Missed call from John**  
 **New Voicemail (1)**  
_I fell asleep in the library again, Alex. When did I turn into you? The lady from the front desk had to wake me up, and she looked so upset that I was there alone. It’s all because you’re not here. Everyone looks at me like I’m going to break, and I think I might._  
 _But… Alex, you can’t miss finals. You won’t be able to graduate if you don’t do this, you won’t be able to apply to law school. I know how much you want that, Alex._

* * *

_Nine Months._

Finals were finally over, thank god. Everyone was exhausted out of their minds, and John had accidentally startled people on more than one occasion, coming out of a class to find someone sleeping on a couch in the lounge area.

Between studying and ignoring the worried looks from his friends, John had still found time to go down to the police station. It was relatively easy to go alone when all his friends were busy with finals, and then busy with relaxing from finals. Besides, he didn’t feel like inviting anyone to go with him. Angelica would continue to remind him that they might not know everything, Laf and Herc would try to get him to relax about the whole situation, Burr would probably remain calmly silent, and Peggy and Eliza would try to reassure him. John didn’t know exactly what he wanted people to say, but it wasn’t any of that.

The detectives seemed to like him, patiently answering his repetitive questions every time, not looking at him with worry or pity in their eyes when he went silent after they had nothing new to tell him.

The walk to the police station became as familiar as John’s walks between classes. His feet carried him down the sidewalks and across half a dozen streets before he realized he didn’t need to think about where he was going, where he needed to turn. He had probably spent hours in the dull gray lobby at this point, waiting for something new.

But there was never anything new, so why did he bother?

* * *

_Ten Months._

Moss had started to appear on the ground, a soft bed for the budding flowers pushing through the ground. The trees were covered in fuzzy green buds that tumbled down to cover the sidewalks, blown by the breeze. Spring was on the way, and John was more than ready for a change in season. Spring meant warmer days and longer hours of sunlight, it meant not having to drag himself out of bed when the sky outside the windows was still an inky blue, dotted with the fluorescent streetlights that lined the sidewalks of the city.

He’d gotten out of class early for once, checking his phone to find a missed call from the detectives, and a short voicemail asking him to come down to the precinct when he had time.

John checked his watch; his next class didn’t start for two hours. That would be enough time.

He pulled on his jacket and began the walk down to the station, kicking at the leftover patches of snow that hadn’t yet melted, hidden from the sun by the shadows of buildings. He let his mind sort through all the possibilities, most of them negative. What if they had to close the case? What if they’d had too many dead-ends, and it wasn’t worth continuing to search? What if they’d gotten a tip, only to find Alex already dead?

But what if they’d found him? What if he was okay?

Truthfully, that was the only thought that kept him from turning around and walking back to the apartment instead of continuing to the gray police building.

The man from the first night was sitting at the desk when John entered the police station, sorting through some paperwork with a lot of bold text on every line. He glanced up when John paused in front of him, standing up and walking around to meet him.

“The detectives are waiting for you,” he said, beckoning for John to follow him. “Come with me.”

He led John down the same dim hallway he’d walked through for the past few months, and opened the door to the same tiny room with the same metal chairs, and the same detectives sitting at the same table.

The man from the desk closed the door as John sat down across from Knox and Green, staring at them expectantly.

“Your message didn’t say much,” John said. “Is… is there an update on the case? Did you find something?”

Detective Greene extended his hand, and then a familiar keychain was sitting in John’s palm, and his breath caught in his throat.

It was the one he had bought for Alex after they’d gotten the apartment, the one he’d stumbled upon when he had been wandering around Target for an hour, trying to find one specific brand of laundry detergent.

_John had finally found the aisle of laundry supplies after going through about half the store. He probably could have been done half an hour ago, but he would rather walk up and down every aisle than ask an employee for assistance._

_Now he was browsing through each shelf in turn, bending down to look on the lower shelves and pushing aside the random items other people had deposited there, deciding halfway through their shopping that they actually didn’t want them after all._

_There was a keychain on the third shelf, a tiny white coffee cup with a smiling face. Normally, John wouldn’t have picked up any of the randomly discarded items, but this one reminded him of Alex, and he picked it up without a second thought._

_Thankfully, the next shelf he went through had the laundry detergent he needed. He would have left without it._

_Alex was sitting at the kitchen table when John walked in the door, working on something that involved a colorful spreadsheet on his laptop and two notebooks filled with cramped writing._

_“Here,” John said. He tossed the keychain at Alex, who fumbled to catch it. “Now you won’t have to dig for your loose keys in your bag every day.”_

_“This is so cute, Laurens, what the hell?” Alex was turning the keychain over in his hands, tracing the edges with his fingers. “Where’d you find this?”_

_“Target,” John said. “It reminded me of you.”_

_“This is too cute to be like me,” Alex said. “I’m fierce.”_

_John rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. You’re only fierce before you’ve had your coffee.”_

Now they keychain was battered and scratched, the paint chipped from where Alex had dropped it or knocked it against other things, and from sitting out on the street for ten months. John rubbed his fingers over the smiling face before he looked up at the detectives.

“Where’d you find this?” he asked quietly. “Is… did you find anything else?”

“A woman found it while she was walking her dog,” Detective Greene said. “Over near the west side of Central Park. She turned them in. We called you because they were found near the area we searched back in May, but there wasn’t anything else that we could find.”

“There aren’t any leads,” Detective Knox continued. “This… we know so little regarding Alexander’s whereabouts before he disappeared. Anything we find isn’t going to lead to very much unless we can connect it to something else.”

He sighed, shifting the file that lay innocently on the table. “And since we already have so little to begin with, there isn’t much connecting we can do right now.”

“There isn’t anything else we’ve been able to gather from this, no fingerprints, no witnesses,” Detective Greene cut in. “We just thought you’d like to have it back.”

“Oh.” The keys clinked gently together as John turned the small piece of metal over in his hands. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” Greene murmured. “I wish we had something different to tell you, I really do.”

“It’s okay,” John said, tucking the keys into his pocket. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone breaking into their apartment. “Thanks anyway.”

He pushed his chair back from the table and shook the detectives’ hands before he walked back down the familiar hallway to the main lobby. It was empty. John’s footsteps on the gray tiles were the only noise in the silent room before he stepped out into constant rumble of the city.

They’d found something. They’d actually found something of Alex’s, but it hadn’t led anywhere. Why had John expected that something this small would lead anywhere?

It never led anywhere.


End file.
